17 Plates and 7 Geos
by 12Katiebug21
Summary: Kate, a world famous Pokemon trainer heads for Mt Coronet with her Sceptile, Triki to stop Cyrus from summoning Arceus and destroying all conscious life. But what happens when it goes wrong and she's transported into the Spectrobes universe? On Hiatus.
1. Sunset on the Spear Pillar

17 Plates and 7 Geos

Chapter 1

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**Yes! Finally got the story upload system to work! This is my first story so no flames please, although constructive criticism is welcomed and encouraged.**

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"Cyrus, if you value your life stop NOW."

The wind on the Spear Pillar howled mercilessly, threatening to blow Triki and I off with every gust. It was sunset on the top of Sinnoh, and the dying sun illuminated with a bloody light three figures. Triki, (my Sceptile partner) and I, as well as a middle aged man holding a leather case as he crouched in the middle of a pentacle made of chalk, with 17 stone plates in the spaces of the star.

"Why should I Kate? Obviously you can't stop me," Said Cyrus, as he slowly straightened up and opened the leather case to reveal an odd object: a small flute made of a blue stone, shaped with tube-like organs all over it's surface."Tell me, why should I, when with one note on this flute, I can have my dearest wish: a universe free of all evil? "Said Cyrus, his voice like an snake slithering fluidly into my eardrum. "The ends justify the means,"

Triki stiffened beside me, he could see right through this B.S. and so could I.

"Why Cyrus? You want to know why? I said incredulously. I could feel my temper rising and I knew Triki felt likewise. "The ends, in fact DON'T justify the means, they NEVER justify the means when the conscious life of this universe is the price, Cyrus so you're not blowing that damn flute!" I was pissed off now and he knew it. "If you want to summon up that legend you'll have to get through me first!" I allowed myself a smirk. "And if precedent is any guide I'll win. Just like last time. And the time before that. Kinda hard to beat a Pokemon Master isn't it?"

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**Okay, how is it so far? Hopefully good? If you find any grammatical problems please review and tell me and I will correct them. And for those who don't know what a pentacle is it's a device used for black magics, generally drawn with chalk in the shape of a five-pointed star and filled with symbols. In this case Cyrus has simply substituted the symbols for plates. Bye!**


	2. Wind and Darkness

Chapter 2

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**Hello I'm back with chapter 2! Hopefully I'll be getting somewhere with this one, the last one didn't really do what I wanted... Oh well, anyways here it is!**

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Cyrus scowled, an ugly expression on an already ugly face. "Houndoom, Honchcrow, delay them!" He snarled. The two Pokeballs sailed through the air and snapped open to reveal a powerfully built, red and black dog, with silver horns laid flat back against it's head, and a depressed-looking, vulture-like crow with a tail not unlike a bouquet of roses.

"Losers." I muttered under my breath. "Hey Triki, let's see if you can beat your best time for doubles!" (I kept meticulous records of his time for both singles and doubles, his best win was for defeating a large Pupitar in 22.62 seconds, hard, but the Trainer needed to take a hit to his ego and I figured I could do it.)

"Houndoom, use Fire Blast, Honchcrow, Ominous Wind!" Roared Cyrus, as he worked frantically in the high wind and the growing darkness to find the right holes in the beautiful flute. The Houndoom's eyes glowed briefly red, the only warning before a gigantic star-shaped flame hit the ground where Triki and I were standing. Not that we were there anymore. Triki had leapt up onto one of the huge pillars like the giant gecko he was, and I had scrambled behind a fallen pillar from ages past.

Triki gave the canine a second or so to wonder where it's prey had went, and then, after taking careful aim, rapidly pounced, aiming for the shin with a well-placed Leaf Blade. There was a cracking sound, and the effectively disabled Houndoom yelped and hobbled off as fast as he could, given that one of it's ankles was broken. I hadn't been idle either. After the fire was spent, I had jumped out of my hiding place and started running up to pentacle where Cyrus stood, still working with the flute.

"Good work, Triki! Now we ca..." The rest of my sentence was cut off as a blast of noxious air hit me, causing me to gag and making my eyes sting. I heard a grating caw somewhere above and silently dammed the stupid crow to every hell I knew of. (Four to be precise, but I won't go into it now.) Thanks to the high winds though, the air cleared up quickly, and with depraved satisfaction I dimly heard another hoarse screech; Triki's Leaf Blade had found it's mark again.

It was pitch black now, and although I couldn't see where I was going, I knew roughly where Cyrus was and continued running on the uneven rock. I was conscious of Triki running right beside me, seven paces, five paces, two paces, one pace...

Suddenly, the world seemed to stop. The rush of the turbulent wind, the painful stitch in my side and the thud of my feet all ceased to exist. A soft music, echoing and reverberating through the pinnacle slowly grew and in a joyous rush took up everything except a small sphere of light in the middle of the also-glowing pentacle. Cyrus stepped out of the center with a maniacal expression on his face; a mixture of fierce happiness and raging insanity. The music continued, more present now, as if some ethereal barrier had been lifted, and the sphere shot dazzling rays of perfectly white light across the entire Spear Pillar.

"Look," Said Cyrus, his voice now with an edge of insanity to it. "I have summoned absolute perfection to cleanse this world!"

He had definitely lost it now, but I could only stare on in equal amounts of horror and joy as the sphere slowly dissolved to reveal a deer-like creature with pure white fur on it's back and legs, leathery gray skin on it's underside and three ornate golden wheels studded with odd gems pressed closely together around it's midsection.

The Azure Flute had done it's work.

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**Oh well, didn't quite go where I wanted it to, but the next chapter will be better! And I want to thank Mikano Zirake, Kiraracat and TobiRuun for reviewing, TobiRuun especially, thanks for pointing**** out the grammatical errors, I probably wouldn't have figured that out myself. Until next time!**


	3. Mind, Body and Spirit

Chapter 3

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**Hello, Katie back on with Chapter 3!**

** I might come back and change this one later since it functions as the breakoff point for the entire story after it. That's a bit of a spoiler, but it's the only way I can really explain. Anyways, hope you enjoy it and PLEASE review! I'm on my knees begging here. Oh yes, and I know there haven't been any Spectrobes so far, but they should probably come into the plot sometime next chapter. This is because I meant to have the first three chapters as just one huge first chapter, but this way is easier and I can concentrate on the details better. Enjoy!**

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Arceus stood in the center of the pentacle, staring with absolute sorrow at the flute in Cyrus's hands, and the now-softly-glowing plates in the spaces of the star. The silence was immense as the music reached one final, wavering note and faded. Still, Arceus stared on, now at Cyrus's face, before turning it's divine eyes upon Triki and I. It was like being in a trance. I could sense that Arceus saw not only what was physically there, but the mind, body and spirit together in one organism. It was pitch black now, but the entire Spear Pillar seemed bathed in a sphere of ethereal incandescence radiating from the creature before us.

"Yes..." Said Cyrus in a harsh, labored voice that broke the tranquility around us. "Yes... I have succeeded... All these months, months and years of planning have paid their due. I am victorious! I AM VICTORIOUS!

That snapped me out of my trance. "Cyrus? You do realize what you're doing, right?" My voice was hushed with fear and barely contained panic. "That if you go ahead, you die too? Cyrus, are you listening? CYRU," The rest of my words were lost, as with a powerful backhand slap to the mouth, he shoved me roughly onto the stone floor and then looked right back at the god before us, as he started to speak, angrily and quickly.

"Can you hear me, king of beasts? For I, one that you have created, has achieved mastery over all things, whatever they may be. Of life, of death even." He said, the odd, insane edge to his voice sinking deeper.

_(No,)_ I thought, (_He wouldn't...Would he__?) _But as I got up, I quickly glanced at Triki. He met my eyes and seemed to be entertaining similar thoughts.

"You have been lax upon your throne, "King." He spat. "But before you are removed from it, I have a final decree for you to carry out. Your order is no less than this: Return the universe to it's original state. Abolish all that is unfit to live in it and let it reform into the swirling chaos that existed before anything else."

It was too much to hear. "NO!" I cried! "Arceus created the universe, why would he destroy it?"

Cyrus didn't even bother to look at me, but answered anyways. "Because I commanded it to be so." He said thunderously. "Because I am the master of both the Seventeen Plates and the Azure Flute, Arceus must and will obey me."

_(The Seventeen Plates...Wait a moment... Does that mean...?)_

I was a stupid, no, moronic plan, but in my situation it was the best option. All I needed was time to pull it off. Hoping that Cyrus would act on his sense of pride rather than his want for an immediate reaction I said: "But how is that possible? The Seventeen Plates and the Azure Flute are inanimate objects. They have no master. Why would Arceus care if you commanded them? All while I was speaking I caught Triki's eye and slightly nodded towards the still-waiting Arceus and the glowing pentacle. He caught my meaning at once and slightly nodded back, before starting to shift position on the uneven rock.

At my question he looked at me and smiled patronizingly. "You're going to try something aren't you?" (_Damn right I am.)_ "Too bad I've grown weary of this monologue. Arceus, finish this!"

For a moment Arceus resisted, but to no avail. With an aura of great sadness and pain, it's fur began to shine prismatically, the glow in perfect accordance with the slowly rising Plates. White energy, neither solid, liquid or gas pooled above and around Arceus in a whirlpool-like formation. In addition, two other spheres had appeared to the left and right of the pentacle. Though they were substantially bigger than the one Arceus had arrived in, they lacked it's perfection and their blue and pink auras seemed disturbed and fractured.

I knew what would happen next. Dialga and Palkia would appear and with Cyrus at the reins, the three legends would be forced to unwillingly unravel the entire space-time continuum, saving the ground they stood atop for last. Divine power coursed throughout the peak, impatient to start it's journey, held back only by Arceus. It was now or never.

"TRIKI, NOW!" Before Cyrus could stop him (I take that back, Cyrus probably couldn't stop him anyways.) he pounced into the pentacle with amazing speed and grabbed something: a cyan-colored plate with Unown runes etched into it's surface and then leapt back.

The effects were numerous and instantaneous. The plates dropped from the air like marionettes with cut strings. The light level dropped so suddenly it was momentarily disconcerting, leaving us in a state similar to the bloody dusk we had just left behind. Arceus was dealt an invisible blow as one 17th if it's spirit was wrenched out of position and Cyrus's shackles were lifted. The spheres representing Dialga and Palkia, cracked and evaporated with a horrible wrenching sound to reveal their occupants, looking distinctly worse for wear.

But most worrying was the fact that the energy Arceus had gathered to execute Cyrus's command with had not faded. It bounced, and anything it touched disintegrated and combined to create more of the white hot substance.

"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Who the HELL starts laughing right now?" I yelled, all the while trying to avoid the rushing energy.

"Thank you, Kate. It was a brave gesture, but made in vain," Said a perfectly calm voice in the center of a cloud of destruction. "Brave, because you were of quick enough wit to realize a plan in the face of absolute destruction, in vain because the world still ends here and now. The energy cleared, revealing Cyrus, more or less unharmed, (Pity, really.) with an odd half-smile on his face.

The words struck me as with a knife. With tears of hopelessness in my eyes I thought,_ (As much as I hate to admit it, he's probably right. I've done all I can do and about the only thing that can save me now is divine intervention.)_

And before I knew what was going on, that was exactly what happened.

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**Darn it! STILL**** didn't make it to Naniero! Oh well, the next chapter will be extremely short and I swear, in chapter five there WILL be Spectrobes. I just couldn't write more of this stupid, absurdly long chapter to save my life. Well, until next time, and please review!**


	4. Time, Space and Spectrobes?

Chapter 4

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**Hello, me again! This time, I'm not lying when I say the Spectrobes will come in next chapter. And when they do, I can finally start to set up the meat of the fic. In the meanwhile though, say your goodbyes to Mt. Coronet and the entire Pokemon space-time-continuum, because the plot will finally pick up the pace a little bit. I don't want to detain you any longer with my stupid author notes though, so here's the chapter! Iku ze!**

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The swirling maelstrom of white-hot force blew as with a mind of it's own, gusting and soaring in deadly arcs. I rapidly ducked to avoid a bit detached from the rest, but in spite of my best efforts, I felt a large chunk of my hair and some of my bandanna dematerialize into thin air. The fact had barely registered with me, when Triki dropped the plate he was holding and quickly pushed me out of the way of another, faster bolt and dropped onto the floor beside me. My jawbone hit the floor first and I heard something crunch loudly, the result being a lot of pain and some blood on the now-pitted stone. Arduously, I raised my head in time to see Cyrus, with a triumphant expression on his face, impaled with a bolt of divine thunder as he evaporated into thin air.

I quickly dropped my head, wishing I hadn't seen it happen.

"So he's dead." I murmured so softly it almost could've been a thought. (_And so I shall soon follow.) _

With that thought, the radiant light of my hope died into ashes. I closed my eyes tightly as I lay there with Triki, hoping to die there on the pitted stones with divine lightning striking all around us. Despite my efforts, through the slit of my eye, a single, glittering tear escaped and landed an a surface that was clear and white and shining.

My eyes flew open in shock to perceive a completely changed landscape. A intricate dome of energy, encompassing the entire Spear Pillar and patterned after Arceus's wheel had gracefully risen into the air. The floor was glassed over as with marble and the ethereal light had returned. I unsteadily got up and noticed my jaw was no longer broken. (_Did I die? Is this heaven? Or am I just going crazy?)_

As I looked across the pinnacle I found my answers, for Arceus still stood in the center of the dead and lifeless pentacle. Every muscle in it's body stood out in high relief as the center of the dome began to resemble a bundt pan with the center focused on Arceus. The energy floated down in a ray to be slowly, but steadily absorbed by the wheel and the plates. As the luminescent glow left the pillars and floor, the stone seemed healed and whole. Dialga and Palkia, somehow unaffected by the lethal rays stood watch over the process at the edge of the dome, looking uncannily nervous as they did so, like rabbits under the gaze of a falcon.

I didn't notice that though. The miraculous truth had hit me: The world wasn't going to perish, I wasn't going to die and everything could return to normal again. "I hope so anyways," I said to Triki in a fake offhand voice to disguise the sudden happiness and warmth in my tone as I watched the energy disappear into the Plates. He wasn't fooled a bit.

It wasn't anything in my physical senses that warned me at first. The aura of the place had previously been warm and homelike, but dropped rapidly into a black darkness behind me. Then I saw out of the corner of my eye Dialga stiffen as if to fight and Palkia blanch white, it's pink scales looking like someone had run them through a washer. Arceus, it's eyes fixed on a position behind me strained to absorb the rest of the energy. Triki too, noticed it a split second before me, turning warlike and drawing his katana before spinning around to face something behind me, the glowing Plate lying forgotten at his feet.

I paused before I turned around to look. I mean, I thought I knew who it was, but I remembered justified anger, not this mindless malevolence. Of course, there was enough evidence in the way Dialga and Palkia were acting. Only one thing would scare them like that.

Delicately swiveling on the balls of my feet, I found exactly what I thought I would find: A very pissed-off Origin Form Giratina, not two feet away from my face. It's tiny eyes were narrowed in enmity (What had I done?) and a gigantic Dark Pulse was rapidly charging inside it's absurdly small mouth. I had just enough time to think, (_Oh shit.__)_ and take a step back before the attack exploded with the force of a large bomb.

This was far worse then the Honchcrow's Ominous Wind. The waves of aura ripped through the age-old pillars and the floor was fractured with the force. The black energy swirled around me so I could only see the largest details of the scene. Only one thing interested me anyways.

"TRIKI!"

As the energy faded I saw him standing defiantly before Giratina, blood flowing freely from a wound on his chest, before he slowly dropped to the ground, dead. He had shielded me from a mortal blow with his life and body alike.

The world spun around me at a dizzying speed, partly due to the shock of losing my lifelong partner but mostly because of the head trauma from the attack. Giratina raised a tentacle to deliver a fatal blow, one that I would be unable to avoid. My entire life flashed before my eyes, as if it was desperate to pack in as much as possible before the end. But before the attack could fall, a agonized scream filled the area.

In the state of shock I had been in, I had neglected to realize that the Dark Pulse had affected more than Triki and I. Turning aroud, I saw that when hit with the powerful attack, Arceus had lost control of the energy and was now in a state of feverish panic, it's fur flashing different colors in response to the plates. Dialga and Palkia, with their leader temporarily incapacitated, took matters into their own hands, Dialga, straining with the crest on it's back glowing and Palkia, making purposeful movements with it's dagger-sharp claws. Some of the white energy responded, gathering in a small pool in the center of the pillar and gradually turning darker, an inky black with streaks of midnight purple shot through the center. The rest began to disappear into what I realized to be a dimensional hole.

At this new development, Arceus seemed to regain some self-control, it's fur slowly beginning to return to it's usual pure white color. It looked at me deeply and I understood that I was to bring the Plate Triki had dropped over to it. I knelt down and picked up the Plate, avoiding contact with the body of my friend. "Goodbye," I whispered, sorrow deep within my voice, before I slowly straightened up and started to walk to where Arceus stood. I heard a rumbling growl behind me, Giratina reminding me that it was still there, but still I walked onward, confident that I was doing the right thing.

A harsh look from Arceus silenced the snarling and I walked on in peace, before setting the Plate down in it's original position. At another meaningful look, I stepped the only other open space of the star, where Cyrus had so recently stood. Arceus again summoned up it's unimaginable power and two things happened. One, all Seventeen Plated vanished and I felt a heavy thud in my bag as they reappeared inside it. I thought to myself _(Crap! I hope they didn't crush anything important, they're heavy!)_ The second thing that happened was brief, but stronger. For half a moment, I could see everything, feel everything, from the impending presences of the legends and fading light of my friend, to the microorganisms in the air and stone and the wind of this world itself I could for a moment feel as clearly as if they were within me. As quickly as the feeling had come, it faded almost completely, taking with it the sensation of euphoric peace that I had held for just a moment.

"What was that?" I muttered mostly to myself. Before I could wonder anymore my instincts screamed at me to be alert. Suspecting treachery, I looked around just in time to see a devastating blow by Giratina's tail knock me off balance and into the swirling dimensional hole.

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**Ahh, I love cliffhangers and now I have two to work on. Poor Triki, I didn't want to kill him off but it was necessary to do so. Concerning reviews, thank you to everyone who has but I do have one request. I like praise and complements as much as anyone, but can you please be a little more critical? Pointing out grammatical errors and flaws in the plot really helps a lot so can you please help with that? Thanks. Katie out!**


	5. Portals, I Hate Portals

Chapter 5

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**Yes! FINALLY the Spectrobes come in! It's actually a 'crossover' now! Please, as always read and review! Seriously, I live off of those things. Anyways here's the chappie!**

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"AHHHH!" I screamed in pain, anguish and panic as the powerful blow knocked me into the dimensional hole. The last thing I saw before the dark flames consumed my line of sight was the body of my fallen partner, who looked as if he knew his sacrifice wasn't in vain, the glorious forms of Arceus and Giratina, fading into the shadows. Then the flames closed and I was cast out into a sea of time and space.

For a moment I shot out at random into an interesting world: It was like the night sky in infinity with subtle streaks of lustrous violet and dusky rose, populated by faceted, hourglass-shaped structures of titanic proportions. As I shot past one of them I realized that in one faucet, it contained a tropical forest where a beast with six legs chased a cat-like humanoid. I was so close that I could touch it, but as I reached out to do so, it changed abruptly into a monochromatic base with metal buildings and people wearing masks. It was so startling that I withdrew my arm and before I could try again, I had sailed past it.

"No," I said, my voice oddly quiet in the space between spaces. "I want to touch it." But try as I might, I couldn't go back. Something was pulling me onwards and I couldn't fight it. Time had no meaning in that place and rational thought was impossible. I might've been days there or only minutes. But I remembered some of the worlds I passed.

In one, vibrantly colored fishes swam through a surprisingly deep, but cool pond, only to scatter when a luminescent blue one was plucked out, wriggling frantically, by a very short, ostrich-like, bright pink bird with blue highlighted feathers and a ring around one foot. In another, two gigantic dragons, one crimson red and the other deep gold, fought over a village, hundreds of feet above the ground. As I passed that one, I could've swore that I saw someone sitting atop the gold dragon as it swooped to snap at the red's neck. The next had a flock of eagle-winged guineapigs _(What the...?)_ racing against the wind before a startlingly blue ocean. The next, for reasons I didn't know was my favorite. It was a forest clearing that glowed with life. In the center, a stone plinth stood, ancient and almost overgrown with vines, but with what it held, a softly glowing, turquoise gear still visible.

There were many others, but those were my favorites. I was really starting to enjoy floating through this serene place, but all good things come to an end. Eventually, I drifted to somewhere near the middle of one of the many enormous structures. There I smoothly glided to a halt. Seeing that I had reached my destination, I peered intently inside. The pillar contained what at first look, looked like an arid steppe or plateau. Then, as I took more careful stock, small bushes and trees began to appear, fed by shallow lakes with bottoms of white sandstone. Most interesting though, were three, large, black and purple tornados that periodically spit out little balls of dust, and smaller vortexes as well. Apart from that, the land was deserted, with not another creature to be seen.

I leaned in closer out of curiosity, almost, but not quite, touching the glassy substance of the structure. From this distance, I could see that both the large and small tornados had a different color underlying the black and purple exterior. A bloody crimson tinge, reminiscent of open fire for the right, a cold and faraway blue for the one in the middle and a sickly green, the color of diseased leaves for the left. Although the larger tornados seemed immobile, wherever the smaller vortexes moved, the earth was charred and consumed, similar to the effect Giratina's Dark Pulse had on the stones of the Spear Pillar.

Realizing that my hands were dangerously near to brushing the surface, I quickly leaned back, muttering incoherently to myself.

"No, Kate. You should know by now, that sticking your hand into a weird, unknown substance is about the stupidest thing you can do in a lifetime of stupid things." I said, desperately trying to talk myself out of it, my voice still sounding eerily empty in the soft twilight. Still the urge persisted.

I found myself relenting. "Okay. I'll stick my finger in there and if anything bad happens, I'll pull it out quickly." I said hopefully, half wondering who I was trying to convince.

Slowly, and with infinite caution, I extended my pointer finger and reached forward. The structure felt like a malleable water and seemed oddly thick, rippling around my finger with surprising force. Suddenly, a immensely powerful suction flung my entire body into the hourglass as I tried to draw my finger out. For a moment, I was thrown horizontally through a multicolored tunnel at blistering speeds, then with a blinding flash of light and a sudden rush of vertigo, I materialized about fifteen feet above the clayish ground.

In the moment before I fell I had time to think: _(Crap. Why can't dimensional portals materialize you at ground level?)_

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**Yay, Finished! The next chapter is a while away for two reasons. One, I have several tests coming up and two, my new ZOID just came in from Ebay and I'll be spending a while building it, so don't be expecting an update soon. In the meanwhile though, a cookie to the person who can find the Avatar reference and tell me it correctly in a review.**

**Katie signing off!**


	6. Brave New World

Chapter 6

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**Hello! I'm here with chapter 6, where at long last, Rallen and Jeena, Spectrobes and Krawl all finally**** enter the stage. Sorry that I've taken such a long time to get here, but it was a necessary evil. (And my Zoid took me a while to build.) And as always, thank you to all who have reviewed and please enjoy the following chapter!**

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I got a split-second more's view of the dusty brown planet below me before it rose up to meet me. Normally, I would've done a roll maneuver to direct the force to somewhere other than my body, but this time, I just wasn't fast enough.

"AHHH!" I screeched in pain. Although there had been enough time to avoid doing a belly flop on the sand, in my attempt to do a roll, I had brought my left leg up, only to have it smashed against the rocky clay with a sound like a branch of wet wood snapping. Judging by a quick examination and the Pokemon health classes I had taken, it looked like the tibia (The larger bone below the knee.) was broken. In addition, I had several bruises and scrapes on my knees where I had fallen and my whole body felt like I had taken an iron-plated punch from the backlash of Giratina's attack.

"Oh god... I look disgusting," I said, quickly turning my eyes to somewhere other than my leg and waiting for my pain sensors to trip. Surprisingly, they didn't.

"Oh yeah, I forgot. Freakn' adrenaline rush," I muttered blearily, dizzy from slight blood loss. In an attempt to find something to make a tourniquet with, I pulled off my bandanna. It had a sizable chunk taken out of it from the aura storm, or whatever you would call that insane attack on the Spear Pillar, but was still the best thing to use in this situation. I painfully pulled myself into a seating position and tied it tightly, watching for a moment as the emerald and white fabric was soaked with scarlet blood. "Great. There goes my bandanna, bloodstains never come out," I muttered angrily, although the dizziness had somewhat evaporated.

I spent a second or so more sitting on the ground before trying to stand up. It was a bad idea. I managed for a moment, before my leg gave way and I toppled back down again, hitting my head in the process. This worsened my already-splitting headache and shot shocks of pain through my leg. Hazy white spots appeared on the edges of my vision so I couldn't be sure of what I saw after.

A figure had appeared about a quarter-mile off, near the spinning vortexes. From what I could see, it_ (She?)_ was female, human-shaped and extremely tall. The human, or whatever it was, had skin of a deep purple, reminiscent of shadows, marked with geometric patterns of a lighter violet. She had long hair, also of the same purple that snapped and bit like a Mawlie. There was also something distinctly sinister about her, the same as the vortexes she walked amongst. One other worrying thing stood out. Even from this distance, she was clearly focused on me, an expression of poisonous malice and surprisingly, a hint of fear on her face.

She didn't seem to want to get to closer for some reason, but instead, she raised an arm and pointed to me, yelling something inaudible as she did so. The three large vortexes merged into one in the manner of an amoeba and moved toward me with shocking speed, bringing the smaller ones with them. The thing _(Person?)_ however, became enveloped in a black vortex and sped away into the stratosphere and out of sight.

The few dim seconds of consciousness I had left showed one person _(Where did he come from?)_, definitely male, running forward and intercepting the large maelstrom. For a couple of moments, the vortex thrashed and boiled but eventually, it dissolved, revealing the person mostly unharmed with three odd creatures beside him, one yellow and catlike, the other like a great bladed shark. The third however, was the smallest, a tiny, red, dog-like creature with ears that curved around it's head like cinnamon buns. Even as I watched, the two larger creatures dissolved into pools of light and disappeared into the person's wrist, although the smaller red one stayed .

Before I could watch any longer though, the white spots gathering at the back of my mind and sides of my vision grouped together and multiplied, obscuring my vision and with a blessed cessation of pain, knocked me unresistingly into a black void of unconsciousness.

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**Yay, More cliff for me to work on!**


	7. Minor Complication

Chapter 7

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**Hello, Katie back again with the next hopefully-cliff-free chapter! No promises though, but enjoy the chapter regardless! Oh yes, and the reason my new story, A Rip in Time, is pretty much blank is because I just found out how the story publishing system works. I'll be placing in the text pretty soon but I wanted to say sorry for the mix-up. In the meantime though, please R&R. Enjoy!**

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"That was pretty easy, wasn't it Komainu?"

Rallen stood proudly in the center of the battlefield as he knelt down and petted the little Spectrobe's curly ears, grinning happily all the while. After a moment he straightened up and briskly tapped a button on the gantlet on his left wrist. A tiny holographic screen appeared above it, the projector cleverly hidden in the somewhat dented white armor. A young woman, no more than seventeen or eighteen with waist-length, pink hair answered.

"Did you find her?" Jeena asked expectantly.

"Yes, but Maja's long since gone now. I saw her near a couple vortexes but before I could get closer, she directed them to merge and flew off." Said Rallen somewhat seriously, a first for him.

"She attacked you? With the vortexes? Wouldn't Maja know they wouldn't do anything but hold you up?

"How would I know? They weren't heading towards me anyways, judging from their path until I intercepted them, they would've hit the highland plateaus in a matter of minutes. I really don't think Maja noticed me at all. At least it was better than having her flir-"

Knowing from experience that he would talk for a while, Jeena cleanly cut through Rallen's babble. "Right. You stay there until I can bring the ship over to your position. It shouldn't be more than five minutes and maybe we can still trace the atmospheric trail, assuming that she hasn't gone off planet yet."

"What?"

Jeena sighed impatiently. Her partner was good at almost anything that required hand-eye coordination but met a wall when technicalities were required. "Look, I'll handle that, just stay where you are until I get there."

"Got it." He said and snapped off the communications.

"Geez Komainu, she was a grouch." Rallen listened expectantly for a growl or bark of agreement from his search Spectrobe but heard nothing. "Komainu? Where are you?" Rallen said, looking for his distinctive scarlet form. He spotted the diminutive child Spectrobe a couple yards away as he sniffed the air, barked at Rallen in an urgent fashion and began running in the direction of a medium-sized plateau, following the exact route the Krawl would've taken. "Komainu get back here! Jeena will kill us if were not there when she comes back!" Still Komainu continued to run, easily reaching the top of the fairly-small but still steep plateau with his four legs, while Rallen scrambled behind him.

"Forget Jeena, I'll kill you if you don't get back her..." Rallen reached the top of the small hill and promptly froze in shock. Patches of the tan sandstone were coated in crimson blood. A girl lay in the center of the plateau, either dead or deeply unconscious. Her leg stuck out at an unnatural angle and a bandanna had been applied as a makeshift tourniquet. Contrary to the rest of the scene, a small bag lay undamaged several feet away. Komainu sat expectantly in the dust, looking at Rallen as if to say: _Well what are you going to do?_

"Komainu... How... You smelled this, didn't you?" The Spectrobe whined as he nudged the girl's arm and walked over to Rallen, repeating the process as if trying to tell him something.

"I know," Said Rallen, his voice shaking slightly. "I'm calling Jeena right now." He again tapped the communications button on his wrist gantlet and the little screen popped up again.

"What is it Rallen? I'm about thirty seconds away, you can wait a little bit longer." Jeena sounded extremely snappish at being interrupted and Rallen quailed slightly at the sound of her voice but still went on.

"Jeena, after you hung up Komainu ran off and found a girl in the highland area, right in the path of where the Krawl would've ended up at. She's either unconscious or dead, I don't know which, either way she's in really bad condition and we're a quarter mile north of your position. The plateau is big enough to land on and I'm sending out a homing signal right now if you can't already see us on the radar," Rallen practically yelled into the mic. He was definitely panicking. Krawl evaporated into acrid smoke when they were killed. Dead bodies stayed.

"Right. I'm switching coordinates and you should be able to spot the ship any second now," Jeena seemed surprisingly unperturbed by the turn of events. "Will the ship's heal pod be of any effect?"

Rallen quickly glanced again at the girl's injuries. They looked pretty severe. "I don't know. For some of the minor stuff yes, but it looks like she's lost a lot of blood and there's a broken bone too. The pod can't do a blood transfusion and I don't think that it can mend a bone without at least it being set first,"

"So we'd have to head to Kollin for treatment?"

"Yes I'd think so."

"Rallen, the atmospheric trail that Maja left is fading even as we speak. Who knows how long she's going to stay on Darkmos? And even if we do catch her there, then how are you going to take her out? You're not going to get lucky twice." Jeena's voice was strained and close to cracking. She wanted her partner to listen to reason but wasn't sure where reason stood in this matter.

"So you'd have her die?" Rallen's voice leapt about an octave higher. "Jeena, this is just short of murder!" He yelled into the mic as their ship passed over and began to hover, perfectly suspended in midair.

"Rallen, you said it yourself, she might be dead and if we can't stop the Krawl then many more people will die. I'll come out and look in a moment but right now I need to cut off so I can land the ship."

The hologram Jeena pressed a button and the screen flickered out of view as the ship lowered to the ground and landed. The ramp extended and the door opened, revealing Jeena as she ran out.

"I swear, Rallen, if this is another one of your practical jokes... Oh... That's pretty bad..." Medical trainee though she was, Jeena's normally brisk demeanor was slightly cut back as she saw exactly how bad this looked.

As she knelt down to examine the girl's leg wound a puzzled expression slowly entered her face.

After several moments Rallen couldn't take it anymore. "Is she still alive or what?" He practically yelled into Jeena's ear.

"Yes. That makes it all more odd though," Jeena seemed unperturbed by the volume and didn't rise to her feet.

This threw Rallen off track. "What? Why is that odd? Jeena please, we need to get her to Kollin," By the end of the statement Rallen's voice had a desperate edge to it.

"Rallen, take a closer look at the break. It's snapped roughly, with tears in the actual bone mass itself."

"So?"

Jeena straightened up and continued to speak in that calm, collected voice. "Rallen, a break like that is usually caused by a serious fall or other concussion. How do you fall in a place like this, the plateaus of Fons for heaven's sake, and still end up in the highest point of the area? Think for once! You'd have to be in the air to begin with and I don't see wreckage of any sort." She didn't stop there. "You might also notice that some of the burns around the torso look a bit like Krawl attacks. It'd have to be a pretty big Krawl to do something like that and if it's still in the area..." Jeena stopped for a moment to catch her breath and then continued. "A third odd thing, all of this is completely fresh, not even ten minutes old. The blood on the clay hasn't even begun to dry."

"And that means?" Rallen had a nagging suspicion that he wouldn't like the answer.

"This happened while you were here. If your sense of time is correct, then just about when you spotted Maja too. Didn't you also say that if the vortex had gone unfettered, this is where it would've ended up at? Don't you think that's a bit eerie?" The question was all but rhetorical but Jeena asked anyways.

"Maybe it wasn't heading toward here. It could've swerved left and taken the pass I came down from."

Jeena frowned slightly. "Mabye. But somehow, I don't think so. There's something fishy going on here and Maja's at the bottom of it, make no mistake." She turned back to look at the girl. "I don't know what's going on but if we can get her back to Kollin in time, I'll bet she can tell us something about it." She turned back to Rallen with eyes blazing. "Cmon' let's get her onto the ship."

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**Man, Jeena talks a lot.**


	8. Major Complication

Chapter 8

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**Yay, I just found something out new about myself! I like reading this kind of chapter but really hate writing them!**

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When you're unconscious, it's supposed to be a bit like sleeping, only less peaceful and you wake up with a killer headache in the morning. I would know. I've been knocked out several times before, mostly in Pokemon battles when an opponent's attack misfires. In accordance, I've also been woken up with buckets of ice-cold water several times, only to find myself lying in filthy mud with an angry trainer yelling and holding a pitchfork standing over me. I would then just get up, finish mopping the floor with them and head to the nearest Pokemon Center to get a change of clothes.

Not this time though. For a moment I wondered if I had somehow reentered that weird place the dimensional hole had brought me to but immediately discounted the idea. They looked similar, wherever I was now still had the appearance of midnight but here, instead of being infinite and unchanging, this place was bordered, mortal and devoid of all structures. Just a velvety blackness, rippling onwards as far as I could see. As well, it felt different here, familiar for the most part but with tiny shocks of another, more primal intelligence shot unevenly through it.

I looked down at myself, unsurprisingly noticing that once again I was drifting randomly in a prone position. My wounds seemed to be gone and I was still in possession of my bag. _(Thank god for that, do you know how much freakn' crap I keep in there?)_

"Where am I?" I asked myself quietly, although I had a suspicion that my unconscious mind already knew and was trying to tell me.

As if in response and with perfect coordination to my curiosity, the horizon line of the area illuminated and several shining white circles appeared on the ceiling, growing larger and swallowing each other until the entire room _(I guess you could call it that.) _was lit with a soft white light. A white, glass-topped, circular table and matching chair appeared in the rough center of the room and for lack of a better thing to do, I stepped down from midair to look at it. This was surprisingly easy, as this time I was only about an inch or so off the ground but odd, because as I walked over to the chair, my footsteps were perfectly silent. It fit the room's serenity better somehow.

I reached the waiting table to find that a small, unadorned, black-bound book the about size of a small scrapbook was laid atop it. Had it been there before, or had I just not seen it in my search?

"I don't think that I missed it... Something black like that would contrast with the white surroundings..." I mused to myself, before I sat down in the well-sprung chair, half-expecting something to happen. When nothing did happen, I concluded that it was _(Reasonably.) _safe to open the book.

The spine creaked slightly as I opened out onto the first page, obviously it had never been opened before. There was no title page or introduction, _(The one time I wanted one too..) _no text at all for the matter. What it did contain however, was pictures.

The first was of a well-taken-care-of, small-town house with forest all around. I recognized it as my home in Little Root Town, an absurdly tiny township in the south of Hoenn. The next was of a ecstatic girl hugging a clearly-displeased Treeko as it tried desperately to squirm away. After that, Roxanne, the rock-type gym leader handed over a badge to an absurdly self-confident Trainer and her more moderate Grovyle. A Sceptile hid in the trees, the leaves obscuring his green scales, ready to pounce upon an Ace Trainer's Mightyena below. The next few pictures showed Triki and I atop Mt. Coronet, and what had transpired since.

A tear welled up in my eye as I realized that he was gone forever and that he wouldn't come back. I shook my head trying to clear it. There would be time for mourning later. Right now, I needed to find out where I was and how to get out. He would understand that. Maybe he would even do the same. Knowing this, I turned to the last page.

The last picture in the book of my life was _(Surprise, surprise.)_ of me again. I was sitting in a white room, looking at pictures in a small black scrapbook._ (Freakn' sarcastic book.)_ There was something eerie about me in this photo though, I looked different. I peered closer, trying to pinpoint exactly what was odd about me and why I was freaking myself out.

My mind had almost come up with a comprehensible answer when the white light sputtered and failed, leaving me in total blackness. I instinctively closed and clutched the book closer to me but to no avail. It boiled and drifted away into the sinister darkness, taking whatever inkling of knowledge I had about the picture with and where I was with it.

For the third time today, _(At least I think it was still today.)_ I was left floating in total darkness. Unlike the other two times though, which had seemed peaceful and serene, this darkness felt inherently malevolent. I didn't notice that quite yet though. I was too busy trying to keep from repeating the "Elder Swear" with all of the beeps filled in to realize this.

After a moment or so, my self-control snapped and I gave up. "WHOEVER THE CRAP IS DOING THIS, YOUR MOTHER IS A.." I broke off the minute-and-a-half-long curse as something cold and leathery very, very, very gently brushed the bottom of my shoe and I realized that I wasn't alone. The burning annoyance left me and was replaced by cold fear, the forerunner to panic, as I finally noticed the new aura of the place, sinister and unhealthy.

Instinct cut cleanly through the sudden fear of the unknown, telling me to withdraw my foot and flee, that something evil was down there. I rapidly acted on the urge, feeling myself shoot vertically a couple of feet as I watched a needle-clawed, red and black tentacle slash through the space where I had been just moments previously. A screech of anger resounded loudly from below me and the smell of acrid smoke drifted upwards, as if something down there had been badly burnt. Other cries sounded in answer to their brethren's apparent pain and I realized that I definitely wasn't alone. I was just a feast to be had and nothing would stop them from soaring up to my level just as easily as I had and beginning to eat.

"Mondays," I said in a bleak, hopeless voice. "I could never quite manage Mondays."


	9. Stuck in Limbo

Chapter 9

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**Hello! I am SO sorry about the uber long delay, I had a lot of stuff going on and the chapter just wasn't turning out right at all! Thank you Kiraracat, Mikano Zirake, and Abbie (She knows who she is.) for getting me to finish up the rest of the chapter, I couldn't have done it without you!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Spectrobes or Pokemon and God help us all if I did.**

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Beep... Beep... Beep... Beep...

As she navigated the ship, Jeena listened to the cardiac monitor worriedly, perceiving that the little beeps were steadily growing softer and softer and the girl's heartbeat slowed. She would've set the Patrol Cruiser's navigational systems to autopilot, but as they were flying in an unmapped region of space, it wasn't working here. And besides, the cardiac monitor was telling her everything that she needed to know, or at least, she hoped that it was. And even if it wasn't, well, she had Rallen watching over everything back there. (_That ought to count for something at least.)_ She thought.

Working together, she and Rallen had been able to get the girl and her insanely heavy bag onto the ship, but for some reason, very few of the life support machines machines were working on her. Making a mental note to get a DNA test run as soon as they got back to Kollin, Jeena had given up the pilot's seat to Rallen and, devoutly thanking her NPP medical classes, attempted to clean and dress some of her wounds by hand, noting as she did that they were fairly severe for what she now suspected wasn't a Krawl attack. The cuts and scrapes, though fairly deep and dirty, had been an easy matter to treat and bandage, the broken bone however, was impossible to treat in their current situation. Jeena had mostly stoppered the bloodflow, but not dared to do anything else without better medical equipment.

Half in an effort to break the silence that now lined the gleaming white cockpit and half because she wanted to know, Jeena looked back and called out "Rallen, any changes back there?"

He answered in a slightly quieter voice, which was odd for him. "No. She's completely comatose, except for breathing and her heart rate and that's getting fainter by the minute. How much longer until we reach Kollin?"

Jeena looked down and checked the ship's navigation radar. They had nearly reached the portal and from the exit Kollin it was...

"About twenty minutes." She again looked back and saw that the spikes on the little black screen had dropped nearly a quarter of an inch since she had last checked, and were still dropping.

Rallen nodded quietly and continued watching the girl again as Jeena returned to her flying.

_(Cmon', you can do this.) _She thought to herself. _(Just a little while longer and we can get you some help, I promise.)_

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"Ahhhh!" I screeched in pain as one of the creatures' claws shot out of the blackness and embedded itself in my side. I was still trapped in that pitch-black, unearthly nightmare and things weren't looking so good. I'd been fighting those things for what seemed like ages and despite my stamina, I was rapidly tiring out to the point where I almost couldn't move.

_(If I stay still though, they kill me,) _I thought grimly as I twisted sideways in midair, attempting to forcibly remove the red claw stuck in my side._ (How am I supposed to fight these things when I can't even see them in this dark?) _To my surprise however, the aforementioned twisting maneuver became unnecessary, as the creature pulled it's suddenly badly-burnt arm back, wailing in pain. I could sense that the rest of the things were confused, milling about and wondering how I had hurt one of their brethren so much.

It was a good question. During the brief reprieve that followed, my mind went into overdrive. (_That's really weird. Why are these things getting burnt every time they touch or come near me?)_ In an effort to shake a gut feeling that I might already know the answer, I quickly looked back down and scanned the area for signs of an attack. For the moment, all seemed clear. I didn't trust my eyes in the shadows though, and got ready to dodge at any second, still staring at the space below me. That's when I noticed it.

It was almost imperceptible, shimmering in and out of being, so at first, I doubted of it's existence. The longer I looked though, the more real it became.

A aura of golden light had appeared around me, at first thin and almost transparent, like oil on water, but becoming stronger and more organized by the second. The creatures, although repelled by the light, lurked just beyond the boundaries of the aura, but refused to attack, so for the moment, I continued to examine the odd corona. As I looked, part of the light diverged and in a fountain of sparks, formed into two intricate golden bands around my wrists, similar to both Arceus' wheel and the odd stone gear I had seen in the other universe.

At that moment, as soon as the energy made contact with my skin, a powerful, rippling shock ran through my mind like a course of lightning, causing me to shut my eyes in slight pain as something began to feel very, very wrong.

(No,) I thought with difficulty as the feeling increased, causing me to shut my eyes in slight pain as it quickly spread through my body. _(__That's not the right word to describe it... I feel more ...more ...distant than anything else, I guess.) _I cautiously opened my eyes and realized with a start that everything looked drastically different. Great, shifting curtains of golden light filled the room, thick as molasses, making me feel as if I was standing in the middle of the Aurora Borealis. The unnatural shadows had been completely driven back and the place was warm, like a summer's day without them. I felt a strange happiness that I couldn't place as I stood there, watching it all, seeing the smoke curl up from the creatures' bodies and the little crimson flames start to flicker merrily as they screamed in agony. I heard none of it.

A red one, the one that had slashed me looked up with a defiant and soulless gaze, the flames just beginning to consume it's hide. I smiled slightly and lifted my arm, so my palm faced it, fingers outstretched with the gems in the cruelly shining golden wheel glowing slightly. I concentrated for a moment, my gaze locked with the animal's and in a moment, cracks filled with golden light began to appear in it's skin as it literally fell apart at the seams. I was conscious that I was laughing insanely as the rest of the things burned into oblivion, although it didn't really seem like me in control, more like I was the passenger instead of the driver in my body.

At length, the unearthly laughter stopped and the lights began to fade from existence. The gems on the bracelets, which had been glowing fiercely the entire time, dulled over and a semblance of control was returned to me, even as a keeling wave of exhaustion struck me from behind. My vision blurred and shook dangerously and I swooned before I even hit the ground.

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**Before you ask, NO, KATE ISN'T GOING PSYCHOTIC! Just wanted to make that clear. If you don't get what's going on, refer to the end of chapter four.**

**Good day!**


	10. Somewhat Quiet Contemplation

Chapter 10

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**Heya!**

** I'm really sorry about last chapter, I accidentally posted the wrong chapter, not the revised and much better one that took me so long to write. I'm actually not really sure how that happened, but it should be fixed by now. On a side note, many of you have been saying that you have no idea what's going on in this fictional universe. To this, I say that you'll find out soon enough, and that all will be explained eventually. In the meantime, I would love to hear your theories about what you think is going to happen next! The person who guesses closest in a review gets a cookie and a snarky response! (Actually, anyone who reviews gets a snarky response, but in a good way.) Enjoy!**

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Light.

Sharp, piercing, insistent light that was shooting dull spikes of pain through my aching head, like someone was trying to hammer my skull open from the inside.

"Ugggh, Triki, make it stop..." I muttered blearily to myself, trying desperately not to wake up any more than I already was, so I wouldn't have to face whatever new horror was waiting there for me. Unsurprisingly, there was no answer and the pain continued unabated.

_(God, please let this be a dream, please let this be a dream, a psycho, whacked out dream brought on by to much Anime before bed and let Triki be standing right there beside me on the couch eating some buttered toast meant for me from the breakfast buffet in the freakn' Eterna City Pokemon Center, please!)_ I thought desperately, all the while trying to forcibly block the sound and vision of the dark creatures burning in the light from my mind. I tentatively opened my eyes to find myself alone (For the time being anyways.) in a small bed with a couple of chairs on either side, inside what looked like a hospital room, mostly decorated in drab grays and whites. The only real color came from the light streaming from a window that opened up onto a small sculpture garden surrounded by a wall of white marble.

My hopes sank. It hadn't been a dream, I didn't know where I was, Triki was still dead and those things... _(Was that...real... too?)_ I thought in a dead voice, staring at the ceiling and noticing that my forehead was covered by a mass of thick white bandages._ (Did I actually ...kill... them?)_ At the word 'kill' I broke down, trying to curl up into a little ball on the bed, screw the crumpled sheets, but I was impeded by sharp protests from the numerous bandaged cuts and abrasions on my arms and torso and the thick cast on my leg. So I settled for the next best thing, shutting my eyes tightly and turning my body away from the lighted window into the fluffy mattress. I immediately felt a stabbing sensation of pain as a sharp piece of what felt like metal poked into of the bandages on my chest, slicing through and drawing a bit of blood.

I quickly jerked up into a sitting position, feeling the spurts of pain from my various wounds and casting angrily around for the offending object in an abrupt mood swing.

"Alright, what the hell did that?" I asked angrily, feeling distinctly ticked off. There was nothing on the mattress that was even remotely sharp or pointy, just creamy white fabric. I involuntarily clenched my left hand into a fist and froze, because as my wrist flexed, I felt a warm band of metal lying against it, and another mood swing kicked in, this time of slight fear and panic. I flopped back onto the solitary pillow, a bad idea, as I felt another jolt of pain when I smacked my head against the bed's metal railing, but didn't really register it. My attention was more focused on my left wrist, where as I turned it to reflect the sunlight, the same, glittering, golden, gem-studded wheel that I had seen in my dream/psychotic hallucination sparkled in the now-bright sunlight. I looked over at my right wrist sitting on the covers and sure enough, it too bore an emblem of the same kind.

"Oh God." I said, my voice sounding small and faraway. "It wasn't a dream after all, I really did... did... kill them... In absolute cold blood." The weight of everything came crashing down on me again, how alone and insignificant I was in this other Here and Now, and images leapt unbidden from the stark truth atop the Spear Pillar and the hidden line that that defined illusion and reality that I had so closely toed in the nightmare. The shock of his death was wearing off now, something had held back the grief and tears for my partner for a while, but that barrier had finally collapsed and the tears came rushing through the gap. I cried for a long while, but eventually, with tear tracks still glistening on my face, I slowly drifted towards thankfully dreamless sleep.

After a long while, I awoke with half-opened eyes to the sound of someone with a gentle voice speaking to me.

"Hello? Can you hear me? Rallen, I think she's waking up."

For a moment, I felt my eyelashes flutter on my face as I blearily opened my eyes the rest of the way.

I was still in the hospital room, but judging by the amber light streaming out of the window, several hours seemed to have passed and it was getting on towards sunset. The speaker was a young woman with bubblegum-pink, waist-length hair and startlingly blue eyes who was leaning very slightly over me from a chair next to the bed. A man stood behind her, around the same age with spiky red hair and auburn eyes. He was wearing what looked like a protective suit of a white, armored plastic-like material covering some kind of black cloth in plates all over both the shirt and pants of the outfit. What the woman was wearing wasn't nearly as functional looking, black yoga pants and a tight-fitting, bright blue shirt with a white jacket seemingly made out of the same armor elements as the man's outfit laid over it.

What's more, they were both staring intently at me, the man pulling up a second chair and sitting down next to the woman. Now that I was a bit more awake, he looked slightly familiar, although I was drawing a blank on who the woman might be.

_(Where have I seen this guy before? C'mon Kate, think for once!)_

I didn't get a chance to speculate for much longer though, because at that moment, the man broke the slightly awkward silence with a question.

"Are you okay?" There was a concerned edge in his voice.

I sat up straighter in the uncomfortable bed, once again, ignoring the sharp protests from the scrapes and abrasions on my torso and arms and trying to break through the major brain-deadness that I was currently suffering from.

"Yeah... I think so anyways.." I muttered quietly, unsure if I could trust these people and still failing to place where I had seen the guy.

"Where... Where am I?"

The pink haired woman had a response ready. I vaguely wondered for a moment how she had gotten her hair that unnatural hue. Seriously, how much dye would that take? "You're in a hospital on the planet Kollin, Naniero system. We picked you up on Fons." She indicated herself and the man sitting beside her as she said this. There was a slight hesitance in her next words, as if she was unsure of what to say. After a moment, she added: "Who are you?"

I quickly thought over my options. These people had apparently gotten me medical attention and saved my hide from the Black Horseman out there, but I was still unsure if I could trust them. _(Then again,)_ I thought. _(They could know what that pseudo-dream was about and explain what those black vortex thingies were doing too.)_ Suddenly, a burst of understanding flooded my mind like a lightbulb in my head, that was where I had seen him! He had been that person who killed the vortex, the Trainer that had probably saved my life without even knowing it. But where were his Pokemon?

I had made up my mind. "My name is Kate." I said confidently. "And I'm a Pokemon Trainer."

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**See, I did update faster this time! If this chapter seems a bit redundant, keep in mind that I'm writing at 11:00 PM on a school night, after hours of tedious homework.**

**As always, please review!**


	11. Tedious Explanation

Chapter 11

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**Back yet again! The next couple of chapters might be a bit slower to be published, (Still faster than chapter nine though.) for the simple reason that it's been a while since I played Spectrobes: Beyond the Portals and I've forgotten the plot a bit. Normally, I would just try to beat the game again, but for some reason, I can't find it. I'll probably just end up looking it up on the internet, but if anyone could PM me a plot summary, then it'd be really helpful and I'd be eternally grateful. Oh yeah, just as another little notice, I'll be taking a couple liberties with the plot, but it should still turn out good. One more thing: if you couldn't tell from context, this chapter is from Jeena POV. Enjoy it if you can, but I'm warning you, this chapter is horrible.**

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"My name is Kate, and I'm a Pokemon Trainer."

I stared incredulously at the girl- Kate for a moment, unsure of how to respond. Rallen too was looking at her oddly, before he turned to me for an answer, the question written in his auburn eyes. For once in my life though, I was just as confused as he was, although this only strengthened my resolve to find the answer.

Several moments passed without anyone saying anything. Kate now looked extremely uncomfortable, in sharp contrast to the confidence she had held a moment ago. "You do have Trainers here... right?" She asked nervously and then added: "Can you please stop staring at me? It's really freaking me out, I didn't mean to offend anyone if that's what I did." She practically blurted out the last couple of words in fright; What was she so scared about?

"No, it's okay," I said in a calming voice. "We just wanted to ask you a couple of questions." This didn't exactly have the effect that I wanted, she blanched white and cringed slightly but still nodded and took a more comfortable position in bed, careful to avoid agitating her wounds.

Rallen finally spoke up, his usual friendliness coloring his tone. "Don't worry, we're not going to torture you or anything. I'm Jeena's unofficial translator, business to English, and what she means by that is we just want to know what happened to you." Kate seemed to have a bit more trust in Rallen's words, some of the fear vanished off of her face and she looked at him in admiration. _(She doesn't even know him!) _I thought, a little peeved at her trusting expression. _(How on Earth does he do that? Everyone that he meets automatically likes him!)_

"Very funny Rallen..." I muttered, rolling my eyes exasperatedly. "Right. I think it's about-"

"Question." Kate quickly interjected. She looked fairly curious now, her blue eyes brightly beaming up at me. _(Okay,)_ I thought,_ (That's one major mood swing in less then a minute, this girl's a little weird.)_

"Yes?"

"How long was I out for?"

Twin urges fought inside me, one to rudely tell her not to interrupt and change the subject, and the other to politely answer the question. The polite half won. My course on diplomacy at the NPP academy had trained me well.

"Considering the amount of injury you sustained, you recovered fairly quickly. You've been in the hospital for about twenty-three hours, the flight to Kollin from Fons took about two hours and you've been sleeping the entire time after the doctors set your leg. What we would like to know though i-"

Rallen took this time to pique up from his seat next to me again. "No, she hasn't."

This time, I made no effort to conceal my annoyance at being rudely interrupted a second time. It had been a long day of flying and waiting and I wanted to finish this quickly. "And what says you, Rallen?"

"I said she hasn't been asleep the entire time." He paused, a pensive look on his face. It was kind of cute really, but I wasn't in a position to appreciate it. "Not unless you sleepwalk, anyways, I mean, maybe you do." He directed the last statement at Kate, who suddenly looked nervous and defensive, as if Rallen's words had put her on edge.

"No, I don't sleepwalk." Her tone was guarded and level and she was obviously trying not to give anything away. I noticed that she had subtly stuffed her hands under the sheet and that she was trying not to draw attention to that fact. Rallen had seen it too.

"If you don't sleepwalk and you didn't wake up, then how did you put on those weird pimp bracelets that you're wearing? And why are you hiding them anyways? We can both see them and they're kind of conspicuous." I silently groaned. _(What difference does it make, Rallen? She woke up for a moment and decided to put on some sharp-looking jewelry, who cares?)_ So it followed that her answer surprised me quite a bit.

She pulled her hands out from under the sheet to reveal the adornaments in question, almost flinching as she did so and refusing to look at them. Two, inch-and-a-half in diameter golden wheels sparkled in the last of the dying sunset, giving then a curious, bloody appearance. "I don't know how." She asked, her voice soft with a hint of sorrow. "I was kind of hoping that you would have an answer for me?" She posed the last statement as a question, this time looking at me for an answer. Unfortunately for her, at this point, I was out of answers and almost out of patience too.

"Clarify." I said curtly.

She hesitated for a moment, trying to get her bearings and then started to talk. "I told you earlier that I was a Pokemon Trainer." The nervous look had returned and she was looking down at her blanket, avoiding eye contact.

I motioned her on with my hand and asked: "And that is?"

"A person who catches and trains Pokemon. Rallen's a Trainer, or whatever you might call them here."

I looked back over at Rallen, who as always, had his Prizmod on him. That, at least answered one question, she knew about Spectrobes but called them something different. _(If that's so though, then why didn't she use them when she was attacked? I mean, assuming that it was a Krawl that attacked her, she could've at least delayed it. Even the child forms can bite if they're so provoked.)_

"Wait, what?" Rallen, as usual, had to put his two cents in. "You've lost me here. If this is about my Spectrobes-" A thought seemed to strike him and he paused mid-sentence. "How did you know that I had Spectrobes anyways?" His tone was questioning, not suspicious.

"I saw you use them on that vortex thingie right before I passed out. I'm assuming that your Spectrobes are those animals that you had? There was a little red one and a cat-lightning bolt thing and one other... a shark, I think?"

Rallen blinked in mild surprise. She had correctly named his team and been conscious only minutes before he got there. "Yeah, Zozane and Shakor for my battle team and Komainu as my search Spectrobe. We'd seen Maja, but she fled and left behind a Krawl vortex. My Spectrobes took care of the Krawl inside and then Komainu probably smelled you and led me right to where you were lying."

"What are the Krawl?" She was a great deal uneasier asking this than querying about Rallen's Spectrobes, as if she already know a bit about the topic. _(Well, that's sensible at least.)_ I thought. Rallen opened his mouth to reply, but I interjected. Ahh, sweet revenge!

"Hold on." Kate turned back to look at me, uncertainty breifly flitting across her face.

"Yes?"

"Rallen answered your question, it's about time that you answered ours." This time, thank God, there were no interruptions so I continued unabated. "We found you nearly dead on a completely desolate planet under strange circumstances. You had a broken leg with a fall-fracture pattern and yet were still found on the highest point of ground in the vicinity. There was a High Krawl not a quarter mile away from you, completely aware that Rallen and his Spectrobes were looking for her and still dawdling on-planet observing you." I stopped to take a breath. "And you couldn't have been there for more than ten minutes before Komainu found you or you would've died from anemia." Rallen shot me a confused look. "Blood loss." I rectified. Usually I refrained from using medical terms around him, but right now, I just wanted an answer. "None of this makes sense and I want to know: What happened to you?"

Kate held silent for a moment, probably trying to organize her words into a coherent response. When the moment had passed, she looked me in the eye and said quietly: "I can answer a couple of those questions, but on the rest, you probably know better than I."

"Just tell us what you do know." God, I just wanted to get to the bottom of this!

She cleared her throat slightly before starting. "It's probably easier to start from the beginning. My full name is Kate Norman and I grew up in Little Root town, in the south of the Hoenn region. At ten, I was allowed to choose my starter Pokemon, Treeko and begin life as a Trainer." She stopped for a moment, and correctly interpreting my death glare, quickly said: "Please don't interrupt. I can explain in more detail later, but this is all relevant to what you asked me. I'd like to finish up answering and then go back to sleep, I'm tired from recovering and it's already nightfall out there."

I nodded in agreement, feeling, although I didn't show it, slightly abashed. I had let my temper at losing a chance of taking down Maja, (Hey, that is a pretty valid cause for annoyance.) the extreme fatigue of piloting the ship all night and then putting my nose back to the grindstone at work all day get the better of me and I wasn't even the one who had gotten mauled.

"Relax," Commented Rallen, "It's been a fairly long day for all of us and I think we could all use some rest. Just give us the abridged version of what happened and anything else, we can clarify tomorrow morning with Commander Grant. He's been wanting to ask you most of this in person anyways." I smiled. Rallen was nice to be around, if sometimes a bit annoying. He always could cheer someone up and had a nice sense of humor as well.

"Okay, I'll finish up quickly then." She seemed fairly happy to have the prospect of sleep ahead of her and quickly continued. "After about two or three years of training, Triki, that was my Pokemon's name, and I were ready to face up to Elite Four of Hoenn." Noting the look of incomprehension on my face, she added: "The five most prestigious Trainers in the region."

"Don't you mean four?" Asked Rallen. I shot him a quick look and he stopped dead in his tracks, quickly muttering an apology: "Sorry..."

"No, I meant what I said. Five. The Elite Four plus the Champion, Wallace." There was bittersweet pride in her voice as she continued. "Triki and I were able to eventually best them and I was granted the title of Pokemon Master, he the honor of being my esteemed partner and the most powerful Pokemon known throughout Hoenn." The pride, bitter as it, was had faded from her tone and as she spoke of her partner's strength, a slightly sadistic edge came into her voice and a twisted smile upon her lips.

It still made no sense though. If she had a guardian like this to protect her, then how did she end up like we had found her? _(Unless, the Krawl had killed him, but that wouldn't make any sense either. If he was a Spectrobe, and one that powerful, then he should've been able to protect her from any Krawl that they could've run into. It just doesn't add up!)_ My thoughts were running in circles, but Kate had continued talking.

"About a year after that, I went to Eterna City in Sinnoh on a challenge and to look at several ancient cave paintings of two legendary Pokemon, Dialga and Palkia. It's a small town and the elder, an old lady named Aralis offered to show Triki and I a different set of carvings not often seen by the public. We traveled a bit deeper into the cave and there they were, a whole room of them." She stopped for a moment and closed her eyes, an expression of wonder filling her face as she presumably relived what she had seen. "These carvings were older, depicting not just Dialga or Palkia, though they were mighty deities in their own right, but all of the trios and legends, from the Elemental Trinity of Hoenn to the Legendary Birds of Kanto"

I glanced at Rallen on the off chance that he might be understanding more of this than I was. Needless to say, I was disappointed. She had said that this was relevant but...

"And at the back of the cavern, lit by a natural hole in the ceiling, there was the last carving, a representation of the final God to all Pokemon, Arceus." Something about the way she said the word, with a mixture of reverence and fear, made me pay closer attention to it, imagining it written with a capital letter. I knew without having to look that Rallen had caught on as well, as he stiffened slightly in his chair.

Noticing our reactions, Kate froze up again, and it looked like it was taking a lot of effort for her to keep talking normally. "Errr, I've got a couple good pictures of the carvings if you two and...?"

"Commander Grant." I answered.

"Thanks, you two and Commander Grant wanted to see them tomorrow." She said, slightly embarrassed. "They're on my Pokedex."

"I'm not even going to ask what that is." Rallen again. For someone who said they'd be quiet, he's been doing an awful lot of talking.

"Please don't, it'd be another twenty minutes of explaining." Despite her dead-tired tone of voice, she still laughed a little bit, but quickly stopped to begin talking again. "Triki and I took our time looking at the carvings, there was a weird picture of Giratina, the Pokemon death God and commander of Dialga and Palkia, below the carving of Arceus, so we took a couple photos of that one too and headed back to the Pokemon Cen- hotel for the night. The next morning, I got a distress call on my Pokenav from Professer Rowan telling me that Cyrus- the leader of Team Galactic, a criminal organization, was trying to summon Arceus and the Majestic Trio atop the Spear Pillar with the intent of mass destruction, and that I was the only Trainer with the power to stop him who could get there in time." She looked at me, her icy blue eyes, surprisingly similar to mine, though slightly numbed by pain and fatigue, still making the message clear that we'd better be listening, because this was the important part.

"There was backup on the way. Sinnoh's Elite Four and most of the Gym Leaders would be there within two hours. My job was simply to delay Cyrus long enough so they could get there and help, and thirty minutes of all-out sprinting and riding later, we were there at the top of Sinnoh, too late. Cyrus had already marked out a pentacle and placed the plates in proper order, so all he had to do was play the Azure Flute and Arceus plus two of the Majestic Trinity would be his to command. He succeeded in doing so, but once Triki removed a Plate from the formation, Dialga, Palkia and Arceus were freed. Cyrus had already called upon Arceus' powers, and their sudden freeing killed him, and nearly killed Triki and I."

"So that's how you got injured?" I asked. "In that case, if you were on a mountain peak, how did you end up on Fons? And where is this 'Triki'? If he's really this good a fighter, then we could use him."

She flinched at my casual usage of his name and, fearing the worst, I realized too late that that probably wasn't the best thing to ask.

"N-no.. That's not how." She was crying, honest-to-God crying. "He's dead... At first, Arceus was able to control and steadily absorb the power, but s-something went wrong, terribly wrong. Cyrus had only managed to call up two of the Majestic Trinity, Dialga and Palkia, the Pokemon of time and space. How the third, their master and fabled counterpart to Arceus, the aforementioned Giratina escaped the call and why he attacked is a mystery to me, but I was the last one to see him. Triki took a blast for me, and died doing so. He saved my life, but gave up his own." At this point, she almost broke down completely, but took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths and forced herself to continue.

"A-fter that... It's hard to remember, but, it felt like instinct was taking over. I was to walk into the pentacle and place the last Plate back in it's original spot. I-I did so and all seventeen of them materialized in my bag and... something else, I think happened..." She seemed to struggle to find words to describe whatever had happened to her. "For a single moment.. while I stood there, I could see and feel everything, past present and future, anywhere the was a light of life, I could sense it. It was blissful and peaceful." She took another quaking breath.

"But before that, Dialga and Palkia had created a dimensional hole to contain the rest of the energy and Girating used it's tail to knock me into it. That, I think, was how I got this..." She held her hand at an odd angle, trying not to let the weird ring around her wrist poke it and indicated a large amount of white bandages just below her ribcage on one side of her body, under which, I knew was a jagged slash line and skin bruised black.

_(So she wasn't attacked by a Krawl... But if Pokemon and Spectrobes are the same, could this Giratina thing be related to the Krawl in the same way? But if the whole, 'portal' thing is true, then maybe we aren't alone in fighting the Krawl. I don't think it was a Dimensional Portal, those things only show up in Rallen's comic books, but someone from another, less advanced, civilization who stumbled upon a portal like the ones showing up in Naniero is at least, a bit plausible. But if that's true, then how did she survive the trip without something protective? This makes no sense!) _Her explanation wasn't really explaining, only making everything that much more confusing.

"Continue." I said. We could both tell that the end was near and Ralle- Wait a minute! "RALLEN!" I yelled in his ear, "WAKE UP! THIS IS ALMOST FINISHED!" He jolted awake almost comically. "What? What's happene- oh sorry!" He said sheepishly, cringing at my death glare. "I fell asleep for a minute there. What'd I miss?"

I was aware that my eye was twitching as I responded. "I noticed. She fell through a portal, the same kind that are causing all of the problems with the Krawl, you can catch the rest in recap tomorrow." Ignoring Rallen's protests, I turned back to Kate. "Now that all members of our party are present, please finish up."

"Umm, okay... It was pretty weird drifting inside the space between spaces, kind of like what being high probably feels like, but evetually, I got to this giant, hexagonal shaped thing with that place inside of.. you said it was called Fons, right?"

"Yes, the Plateaus of Fons." Hmmm... Rallen seemed a bit keener to participate in class discussion now.

"Anyways, it had the Plateaus inside of it and there were these vortex thingies too." She seemed a bit defensive about what she next said. "It was like instinct again, and, what else was I supposed to do? Starve to death? I did the only thing I could do in that situation... I..."

"Yes?"

"I... poked it with my finger..." Okay, what was the big deal about that?

"Yeah... I know... that was pretty stupid..." She muttered almost to herself. "After that, I couldn't get my finger out and I was sucked in and spit out about fifteen feet above the ground, I couldn't roll fast enough and I broke my leg. That was how you found me there." From what she said, that sounded like the end of her monologue, but the way she said it made me think differently. There was something else, though I couldn't think what. My train of thought though, was interrupted by Rallen.

"Right! Is that all?" He asked brightly.

"No," I knew it. "But I can elaborate more tomorrow." She looked at me again. "I'm sorry, this doesn't make much sense to you guys, but I can and will explain in more detail later, but after, can someone tell me what's going on? I'm also in the dark here."

I looked over. Rallen was waiting on me by the doorway, presumably happy to be out of the uncomfortable hospital chair. I made it quick. "Yes. We've got some explaining to do tomorrow too, we owe you at least that... And..."

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry about your friend. You must've been pretty close if you were together for three years and I'm sorry that he couldn't come with you. Good night." I walked put of the room with Rallen. When I'd come in, I'd hoped to find some answers, but instead, as I left, all I had were more questions.

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**Ouch, this didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. Sorry it's so bad, I have hard time writing dialogue, please no flames for OOC!**


	12. More Tedious Explanation

Chapter 12

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**Hello, back again! This chapter, as you may have surmised from common sense and the name, is more backstory, on both Kate and the rest of the NPP's behalf. Hope that you enjoy it anyways! Also: Does anyone actually read these notes? If no one does, I'll just stop doing them and cut straight to the chase. As usual, enjoy and please review after!**

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For the amount of talking that I'd done last night, I woke up pretty early. Of course, a blaring wake-up call at 6:30, residual noise afterwards and a lot of aching just about everywhere in my body probably played a large part as well. Either way, after some difficulty with the thick cast on my leg and the annoyingly sharp bracelets (They poked a hole in my favorite grass-type T-shirt, I was going to wear that!), I was awake, dressed and extremely bored by 6:50. I looked out the window for a while and found that the scenery was mostly unchanged, save for the multitude of cadets, all whom seemed to be wearing about the same uniform as the people- Rallen and Jeena, I think, who came in last night.

I flushed with embarrassment. I had been crying in front of two total strangers. Crying. True, I'd had a good reason, but I didn't cry. Ever. Not even when some idiot Team Magma grunt sics their Houndour on me and I end up with second-degree burns. _(But that's a different kind of pain.)_ I thought. _(Physical, and more easily recovered from, not emotional like this.)_

I shook my head to clear it. Triki would've wanted me to move on and get over it, and I intended to follow his advice and make up a plan. _(Right. Problem Nr. 1: I need to find out where I am and if there's a way to get back to Sinnoh. Problem Nr. 2: I need to find out what the hell is up with these damn bracelets and those psycho dreams. There, plan formulated.)_

I involuntarily thought back to the weird dream I'd had. It wasn't quite as horrifying in the bright sunlight with a bit of distance put between me and it, but the sound of those things' agony-filled death wails was still enough to make me pale in fright. And I was sure it wasn't a dream either, the bracelets were still here and I could remember every detail perfectly, including my psychotic glee, which was unusual, not to mention creepy. No, that wasn't a dream by any stretch of the imagination. _(Hopefully, I'll get some answers in the conference... If they ever come, it's been an hour already!)_ With that, I pulled my leg up onto the bed again and stared at the ceiling for an intermediate amount of time, continuing to wonder where the crap I was, and eventually, after exhausting that topic, starting to think about breakfast.

_(I would want a crepe... with Cheri marmalade inside... and Nomel for garnish... and whipp-)_ BZZZZZZ!

I jolted out of my increasingly random thoughts at the sound of a loud buzzer on the outside of the ward door. After a second, the buzzer stopped and a voice sounded out from a mike on the wall.

"Kate Norman, I request to enter." Finally, I'd thought they'd forgotten about me!

"Come in." The door opened to reveal a man of about average height and build. He had black hair and was wearing the same uniform as the other cadets I'd seen out of the window and for a moment, I wondered if I hadn't possibly seen him walking out there.

"Commander Grant requests your presence at the recap." He spoke stiffly, as if he was annoyed about having to deliver the summons. "My name is Officer Avens and I'll lead you to his office." It was a command, and he was almost walking out before he finished the sentence. _(What's his problem?)_ I wondered to myself, struggling to quickly follow suit with the heavy cast on. I was beginning to hate that thing with a vengeance.

Thankfully, 'Avens' waited for me in the deserted hallway, a slight smirk on his face. That kind of got under my skin. "What's so funny?" I asked, putting on my best sarcastic tone and lifting my chin to maximize my five-ten height (Yeah, I'm that tall, deal with it.). I was able to look him squarely in the eyes.

"Nothing." He replied, stalking off down towards a door that led into the gardens I'd seen at the end of the corridor. Ignoring a burning sensation in my lungs and chest, (Probably a side effect of the Ominous Wind, I don't know what it was made of, but I had been breathing it in.) I matched Avens' pace throughout the entire walk, passing in and out several buildings, until we reached our destination, an ornate set of double doors made of smoked glass, with nary a word said. Once there, he held a door open and smirked, again. Maybe it was wrong of me to judge so soon, but I had started to hate him every bit as much as I hated that heavy leg cast that I was wearing.

I walked through the double doors, deciding not to say anything that I might regret later. As Avens padded away (Apparently, he wasn't included in the recap.), I vaguely heard him mutter something about a coffee break. That explains everything.

The doors led out onto a short hallway which abruptly opened out into an gigantic, but almost empty room. The floor in the center bore what I assumed to be the NPP crest, and the only furniture was an official-looking desk and several chairs, as well as a large screen set up against the far wall. Four people stood there, two behind the desk and two in front. I recognized the two in front as Rallen and Jeena, although the other two, a severe-looking man with grey hair and a mousey brunette were unknown to me. I could however, make a fair guess that the older man was Commander Grant, the other woman was probably a different officer. I had heard them discussing something with somewhat raised voices, but they turned as one to look around when they heard me enter. This stupid room had really good sound reflection and the clunking noises I was making with every step didn't help.

I froze instantly. I'd never really liked being the center of attention, even though I'd gotten plenty of it whenever I went anywhere near people, one of the drawbacks of being a world-class Trainer. Even then, most of the looks were in admiration or challenge, and I'd known how to respond, which made it easier to get through them. Here however, was an unknown area and though Rallen was extremely friendly and Jeena had seemed kind enough, the Commander and the other officer didn't look so hospitable. Especially the other officer, the commander just seemed like this was his normal expression, but she was glaring daggers at me for some reason and it was too much to hope for that she hadn't had any coffee either.

"Right, come on then. We don't have all day." Her voice had a reedy tone to it and she motioned me over with her hand to emphasize the summons. I didn't want to show my hesitance, so, following the tried-and-true method of dealing with adversity that I'd used whenever I had to deal with amateur Trainers who thought that they owned the world, I walked confidently forwards, straightening my posture and acting like I knew everything that was going on. It probably didn't fool anyone, but it made me feel better anyways.

"Yes, Ma'am." I said, walking the rest of the way over to the desk. It usually paid to be polite to people in charge, at least until you knew the extent of their power. Even if they were acting like jerks for no apparent reason. _(Hooray.)_ I thought cynically. _(Even in alternate universes you can't escape them.)_

I reached the desk and stood to face the Commander, Jeena moving slightly aside so I could face him. He looked very old, but powerful and charismatic, with iron grey hair and a weathered composure that reminded me of an older Steven, the Trainer of stone. He looked like he'd fought in his day and the way he spoke reflected that.

"Thank you Rainera, I think I'll take it from here. If you'd be so kind, check that the patrol ships are ready to fly, no matter how this plays out, Rallen and Jeena'll need to be able to leave as soon as this conference is over." He wasn't talking to me and the real recipient of the message, the officer who I assumed was his secretary didn't look happy at all. She opened her mouth as if to say something but the Commander forestalled her. "That's an order," He said with a stern glance. "If you step lively, you won't miss too much."

She continued to glare for half a second more, but quickly straightened her features into a forced smile of poisoned honey. "Yes sir, I'll be back momentarily." With that, she turned around and strode off towards the doors without a single look back, her shoes squeaking on the polished floor.

We all watched her go. Eventually, the doors clashed shut and the Commander turned back to me. "Right, now that she's gone, we can get down to buisness. Before you came in, Jeena," He nodded respectfully towards the pink-haired officer. "Provided me with a summary of what you said last night, so there's no need to waste what time we currently have in repitition." He motioned for everyone to sit down and I gladly did so, nearly falling into the chair in the clumsy motion. Again, the damn leg cast was throwing me off balance.

"You've also opened up a few questions with your explanation." This time, it was Jeena speaking, taking on that crisp, business tone again. "Before we move on, we'd just like to ask you a couple of them."

She was going to say more, but the Commander silenced her with a slight gesture and she immediately deferred. I noted that Rallen hadn't said anything yet, that he was mostly listening impatiently off to the sidelines. Maybe he was just waiting for the right time to put his two cents in, or maybe he just wanted this over quickly. I had a sense that he wasn't exactly the person to be counted on for facts or information, the impression probably stemming from the sporadic nap he'd taken last night while I was talking.

"Miss Kate, are you still here with us?" It was the Commander talking and his voice had a slightly patronizing tone to it now that immediately put me on edge. I felt myself blushing with embarrassment as I realized that I'd been spacing out while they awaited a response. I thought I'd conquered that habit a long time ago damnit!

"Errr, yes, ask away." I muttered, looking at the floor and trying not to act like a total idiot. Again, just for emphasis, I liked being Hoenn's best Trainer, but I always found a way to bungle things that involved interaction with other humans. One such incident gave me a warning out of Pacifidlog City for life. I've never set foot there again and am most likely going to have things continue that way, thank you very much. It wasn't my fault that that I was ignorant of the fact that distilled Sitrus Berries can produce a substance similar in composition to hallucinogens...

"Presumably, Rallen and Jeena have already given you my name, Commander Grant, and I know yours already from the report Jeena delivered to me earlier this morning, so there's no need for introductions." Thankfully, he'd lost the patronizing tone on his voice and now just seemed more-or-less relived that I was responding. "The report contained the summary of all that you relayed to Rallen and Jeena last night and I'd like to go over it with you to make sure we have the essentials right." He pulled out a sheaf of papers from an unseen drawer on his side of the desk and began reading from the top page.

I stared on incredulously. That report was about five pages long, front and back, and presumably typed up in the hour or so between the wake-up bell and this conference. I looked up at Jeena, silent shock coloring my face and she smiled mysteriously and shrugged casually, like this was no big deal. Rallen noticed my expression and grinned broadly, confirming my suspicion that Jeena had been working overtime on it and he was proud that he had a partner who could do that.

"Right, let's get started." The Commander's voice once again stopped my train of thought dead in it's tracks and made me pay attention. "First, you say that you arrived on Fons via a dimensional portal."

"Yes." I answered, making a robust effort to sound sane, that is, assuming they haven't already counted me in as crazy.

"Second," He continued. "You have the ability to control creatures known as 'Pokemon', but lost your partner before you entered aforementioned portal."

"Yes." My voice was a bit colder this time. They might think me crazy or not, but I wanted to let the Commander know that he was walking on thin ice by referring to my one true partner without any respect for his sacrifice. He politely took the hint and continued.

"Third, you freely admitted last night that there was more you didn't tell us."

"Yes again." I tried to keep my voice neutral this time. There were several emotions locked up in that sentence and I'd prefer not to reveal too many of them until I could sort them out with the aid of a bit more information on that subject. I could feel the rings pressed around my wristbones and I involuntarily clenched my fists below the desk, letting go a moment later. There was no reason to feel threatened, so why did I feel like I wanted to attack? In an effort to continue to act civilized, I added on: "I really would like it if someone could fill me in about where I am though, there's not much else I can tell you and an explanation would help me in that area too."

The Commander smiled slightly and said: "Well, yes, I'd agree. It's about time that we kept our end of the bargain and gave you at least the general details of what's going on here."

He then, with the technical help of Jeena and the enthusiastic descriptions of Rallen, proceeded to fill me in on my current situation. It was rather depressing. Apparently, the vortexes I'd seen contained shadow beings, the Krawl, who ate planets and destroyed star systems, and had devoured one called Ginora before they arrived here, in Naniero, were war was being fought against them.

Rallen and Jeena had been patrolling several months previously when they'd gotten a distress call from a planet called Daichi, where they'd both made important discoveries. Jeena had found a cryo capsule with a man they'd later found to be called Alodus inside, and Rallen had found a Prizmod, a device for holding Spectrobes, creatures of the light that could fight against the Krawl. That had been a Eureka moment for me and everyone involved, that Spectrobes and Pokemon were very similar to one another, both being intelligent creatures with the ability to fight. They seemed especially similar to the Fossil Pokemon, seeing as they both had to be brought back from excavated fossils, although, when I mentioned this, Jeena explained to me that the Spectrobes take on their fossil states when frightened, near death, or after long periods of inactivity and that Rallen was one of the only two known people with the ability to wake them up from the fossil state, the other being the kidnapped Alodus.

It also explained why they were interested in me. If I could train Pokemon, then maybe I'd be able to command Spectrobes as well and help fight against the Krawl. I tried to remain noncommittal on that point, I just wanted to get back home, not be dragged into some interstellar war with alien creatures, even if I DID want to see some of the Spectrobes in action.

In any case, Rallen proudly summarized the events since, how he'd been able to use his Spectrobes to singlehandedly fight off the Krawl on Daichi, how Alodus was able to show him how to awaken the child Spectrobes, how Jeena had helped him resurrect the Ancient Ship to reach Medio and Himuro, and how he was able to take down Golblada, the Krawl scout and a Xelles flower in the Krawl nest using the Flame Geo. I noticed Jeena rolling her eyes a bit as he talked through some of the parts where he and his Spectrobes were fighting, making me fairly certain that he was using at least a bit of hyperbole.

When he'd finished this part of the story, he handed the next part off to Jeena to tell. I was certain I knew why, apparently, about a month after Rallen had destroyed the Krawl nest, the High Krawl Member Maja had hijacked the Ancient Ship, kidnapped Alodus, stolen all of Rallen's evolved Spectrobes and taken the Flame Geo and escaped with her prizes through a portal to boot. That must've been a bit of a hit to his ego.

I suddenly felt pretty bad for him. I'd only lost my one partner and it wasn't like we were being counted on to save the world from imminent destruction or anything and I was still moping about it. Rallen and Jeena had apparently lost every single Spectrobe they'd been able to awaken and train so far, and a friend and, I guess a mentor had been taken from them and they had no idea what had happened to him, despite meeting the kidnapper on the field of battle twice.

But, Rallen had said that they still had some leads on where Alodus might be, and he was able to train some new Spectrobes for battle. In fact, as I found out in a moment, some of the new Spectrobes were very ready for battle indeed.

"It's not just normal Spectrobes that I've been able to awaken." Rallen said, again puffing up with pride. "The reason we lost to Maja on Daichi was because she had something vicious up her oversized, black dress sleeves: A pair of Dark Spectrobes, Pinska and Makanoto. But Jeena helped me excavate some of Dark Spectrobes of my own, Zyrgazelle and Pachazoa."

"I still don't know about those things Rallen." Jeena said, trepidation in her voice. "They seem pretty feral and to be honest, I'm not really sure if they can be controlled. For the love of Christ, they're part Krawl, you saw with your own eyes what your Zyrgazelle did to Zozane. There were slashes from that psychotic thing's wings were all up his flank and he couldn't put any weight on his left side for a week!"

Rallen flushed angrily. "That's why the Dark Spectrobes are in a different incubator room now! I care just as much as you did about what happened to Zozane and that's why I don't let them out in public anymore!"

"You took those things out where there were other people?"

"Only on the NPP training grounds!"

"There were still other cadets out! The body armor we've got on isn't strong enough to resist a Spectrobe mauling!"

"He didn't maul anyone!"

"He could've!"

"But he didn't, did h-"

"KNOCK IT OFF, BOTH OF YOU!"

The Commander yelled through their argument with surprising volume, cutting off all room for further bickering. "I expected better of you two. You're my top two officers and though you don't always get along, I'm talking mostly at you, Rallen," The aforementioned officer wore an expression of perfect indignation at this. "You usually can work pretty well as a team with Jeena but you need to do a better job of not upsetting that balance."

He turned to Jeena. "I can't believe that I'm being forced to talk to you of all people like this, but Jeena, you might not like Rallen's Dark Spectrobes, and it's true, I'm not exactly a fan of them either, but in this case, it's necessary to use them for the greater good, so you'll just have to deal with them for now."

He looked at me and for one absurd moment, I thought that I might be on the receiving end of another tongue-lashing. Instead, he wrapped up the explanation with a final: "That's about all we know right now. The next mission for Rallen and Jeena is to strike out for Darkmos where Maja will be waiting for them. With any luck, they'll be able to defeat her and gain some information on where Alodus could be and if he survived the crash." He straightened his posture in the imperial-looking chair. "Now that that's finished, I'd like to ask you to tell us now what you didn't tell Rallen and Jeena last night."

I blushed with embarrassment. What was I supposed to tell this rational, factual, completely sane man? That I'd had a psycho dream about viciously killing Krawl? And that aforementioned dream left annoyingly sharp and pointy hula-hoops around my wrists that kept glowing at inappropriate times and looked too much like Arceus' ring to be coincidental?

In a word, yes. I said almost that, trying to make it sound meaningful, but also editing out the part where I was ecstatic that those things were burning to ashes. I'd just met these people, I didn't want them to think me a complete psychopath just yet.

"That's the rest of what I know." I finished lamely, holding up my hand for examination. I could tell that no one was particularly impressed by that, that I probably would've been better off not mentioning it. For now though, I tried to salvage my injured pride by asking: "I guess now that all of that's over and done with, what do you want to do with me now?"

Rallen energetically jumped up to his feet and answered. "Well if you're really a top-notch Spectrobe Master like you say, you could help us drive out the Krawl!"

"Rallen..." Jeena muttered, trying to tug him back down.

"You might not have any Spectrobes to fight with now, but I can take you into the incubator where I keep my extra ones and you can choose a pair! Maja won't stand a chance with four fighting Spectrobes on her!"

"Rallen, sit down and give her a chance to breathe!" The Commander yelled thunderously.

Rallen quickly turned around to face him and excitedly started talking. "But Commander Grant, she'd be able help Jeena and I take down Maja and find Alodus!"

"I don't disagree." He turned to me and smiled mysteriously. "But the real question, does she want to? Or even can she? You don't know for certain if you even can command the Spectrobes do you?" He asked, still smiling slightly.

"I'd think so, but..." I cast around for a way to express my thought for a moment. "Pokemon of my world aren't like your Spectrobes. They're the animals of my world and anyone, with a bit of practice can become a Trainer, not like your awakening. Still," I quickly said. "I'd at least like to try. And as for the first question, I'm not really sure. What I really want is to be able to get back to my own universe, back home, back to Hoenn." That was the absolute truth and I saw from the crestfallen expressions on everyone's faces that it was what they were expecting me to say, but also that they were hoping for me not to.

The Commander spoke first. 'If that's really your ultimate goal, then we can't stop you." His words made my feel bad, heartless almost for saying that, but it was true. "However," He unexpectedly continued. "If you participate in this escapade, we may be able to help you reach your goal a bit sooner. The Krawl have been opening portals throughout Naniero and if you can find out how exactly they're doing it, we could possibly open one to take you back home."

That changed my thinking immediately. "If there's a chance of opening up one of those portals and beaming me back to Sinnoh, then I'm in." I answered determinately. By one way or another, I was getting home. "I don't really think I'll be heading out on any interstellar adventures for a while though..." I said, motioning to the various bandages and $%#ing leg cast that I was wearing. "At least, not until I can recover."

Jeena laughed a bit. The atmosphere had improved considerably ever since I'd agreed to help Rallen. "Don't worry, that's not going to be a problem. In Naniero, we might not have the best treatment for Spectrobes, but Kollin is one of the main medical centers throughout the Naniero system and be that merit, you should be able to take the cast off by now. Your leg will be a bit weaker than normal, but the bone's been set and it'd be difficult for you to break it open again. The rest of your wounds might take a bit longer to heal, but as long as you stay out of the way of direct Krawl attacks, you should be fine."

"Oh... Great..." I said, still left with a lot of trepidation about going into a war zone like this. "Thanks, I guess..."

"If this meeting is over," I jumped as snobby voice sounded out from behind me, right in my blind spot. The Commander's assistant had returned. "I'd like to have a word with Commander Grant and you Rallen, can take her off to the mutt pen so she can find one she likes. Jeena, you ca-"

"Rainera, it might be helpful for your career to remember that Rallen and Jeena outrank you by several stars, and if you intend to advance any further here, it's you who should be listening to them." The Commander's voice was cool and he said it in such a way to cut off all further argument from his secretary, who now looked uber-pissed. He then turned back to us and said: "You may go. Rallen, I do think it advisable to have Jeena take our friend here up to the medical wing to get the cast removed before you enter the incubator. It would be best if she was on her toes when dealing with some of your more ...temperamental... charges."

Rallen looked slightly crestfallen at this development, but he still raised no complaint when Jeena led me out of the conference room and into the endless maze of hallways and rooms that made up the NPP headquarters. The last thing I heard before the doors closed behind me was Commander Grant distantly saying something to Rallen. "This time, you better not run the ship through any more meteor fields or I'm instating Jeen-" I passed out of hearing before I could catch the last of his threat.

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**Yay, I'm past all of the explanations and the fun part is finally going to start, so I'll probably update a bit faster now! If you can guess what's going to happen next, or if you think you've figured out any of the plot details, I'd like to hear it! Just press the big green button below this Author Note and send me a response to this abysmally long and tiring chapter! I promise, the next couple ones will be a lot shorter. On a side note, I'd like to give my thanks to Kiraracat for patiently answering my questions. I'd be very lost without you.**

**Ciao!**


	13. TorgaPwnage!

Chapter 13

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**Mwahahahaha! I'm back with chapter thirteen of this sorry excuse of a Fanfic! In this chapter, the question of which Spectrobe that many of you have been asking in your reviews will be revealed (Wait, sorry, that's next chapter.), Kate is put through a lot of crap, Rallen avoids aforementioned crap, and the plot starts to move forward unhindered by all of the technical difficulties that I encountered while writing the last couple of chapters! What fun! Please enjoy and review afterwards!**

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They say you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. It turns out that not all of the NPP were pricks like the officer that escorted me to the meeting room and the Commander's secretary. This was proven to be true for me as I followed Jeena out of the now-crowded main NPP complex and into the slightly smaller medical wing, were she was able to get one of the nurses to finally cut away the cast. Just as she promised, my leg was weaker, but the bone was firmly set and I could walk without difficulty, something that I was thankful for, seeing that I'd probably be doing a lot of walking in the near future.

Jeena started speaking for a bit with someone from her department, another officer in a fairly heavy-duty white suit like Rallen who'd apparently come to catch her before she left for Darkmos. Something about new fossils, I wasn't really listening, being more concerned about the various other patrons who'd come in and were asking me about the similarities between Spectrobes and Pokemon. I answered as best I could, all the while wondering how the hell news had spread so quickly. Most people were assuming me to be a Spectrobe Master, which was weird considering I'd never even seen one except in a couple of photographs Rallen had used to illustrate his story and in the distance for a couple of seconds on Fons.

"So was your 'Pokemon' Corona, Aurora or Flash?" This was another one of the nurses, not the one who sawed of the cast, but a different one, apparently on break. Or slacking, I didn't really know.

"Coro... Wait, what?" That's some weird terminology they use here.

"You know, the elemental alignment, Corona can burn Aurora, Aurora beats Flash and Flash douses Corona." Oh, the types! Wouldn't it just be simpler to call it like it is? I mean, Fire, Grass and Water worked just fine for everyone in my world...

"You'd consider him Aurora I guess, if Corona is Fire and Flash is Water. He's a second stage starter Pokemon, Sceptile."

"So he was an Adult Spectrobe?" This time it wasn't her asking, but an unfamiliar officer who'd appeared out of the throng of people in the waiting room. He was about my height with short, sandy hair he kept under the NPP uniform's admittedly pretty snazzy hat. What a shame. Almost equal to my bandanna, which I'd found on my bedside table next to my bag. Somehow, there were no bloodstains (Powerful detergent?) on it and the part that had been evaporated was repaired with a similar fabric. I'd made a mental note to find out whoever did that and give them my sincere gratitude, but so far, I hadn't had the opportunity.

"No, an Evolved Pokemon." I knew enough about Spectrobes to be just familiar with the three stages of evolution, Child, Adult and Evolved, which were almost the same as Pokemon evolution. It still felt kind of weird mixing Pokemon lingo with the terms that were used for Spectrobes, most of which I was still learning about. In any case, it got the point across okay and everyone more-or-less understood what I was trying to say, which was all I was looking for.

Still, now that I was awake and could fully appreciate it, coming here was a major culture shock in some ways. They had friggin' spaceships here and everything was all shiny! Looking out the window revealed rows and towers of hundreds of fantastic silver and white skyscrapers, as far as the eye could see. I'd tried looking down once, but the drop down to the bottom of the city was so heavily obscured by ships and people and just plain distance that I couldn't see much. It was nicer to look at the sky anyways. For now though, the people were still there and were still asking questions, so I couldn't exactly do that.

"If he's an Evolved form, what did he evolve from?" This was yet another officer, female this time with short black hair.

"Treeko and Grovyle, Treeko being the Child form and Grovyle being the Adult."

"What did they look like?" The blond man again asked this, the nurse had been called away on something. Okay. She had been slacking after all. Why does this not surprise me?

I was halfway into the task of reaching into my pocket and pulling out my Pokedex as an answer when Jeena seemed to finish with her conversation, waving me over and giving me a genuine excuse to drop the conversation. I slipped my way through the throng and joined her near the exit, where we began walking with what I hoped was the place where they kept the Spectrobes as our final destination.

"So what did he want from you anyways?" I asked, now genuinely interested. "I caught 'new fossils' but that's all."

She shrugged and took a left on one of the branched hallways, I finding much it easier to duplicate now that my left leg wasn't imprisoned in inch-thick plaster. "He just wanted to tell me that his group, he's a digger for one of the archeological teams, were able to excavate a couple of fossils with the custom parts still attached."

"Wha?" Yet another piece of information that I was unknown to me. I should probably start writing this stuff down.

"Custom parts. Sometimes, if you excavate a fossil carefully enough, there's little extra things attached to the Child Spectrobe within. They're species specific, and there's two for every Adult and Evolved form Sepctrobe, one that raises defensive capabilities, and another that does the same for attack. Did Pokemon as a species have anything like that?"

It was a good question. I thought for a moment, walking beside Jeena as we entered the main NPP building again, this time walking towards a new-looking room labeled 'Incubator and Spectrobe Database' on a glass plague near the sliding doors. "No." I answered deliberately. "Pokemon had abilities and type alignments and they could evolve like Spectrobes, but in most cases, nothing like that."

We entered the room. It was just a bit smaller than the Commander's lecture hall, but still decently sized and well lit from a large wall-long skylight that seemed to be made out of reinforced glass. Contrary to the hallway that we'd just left however, there weren't many people inside, several blue-uniformed researchers and another officer. The main feature in the room however, wasn't the human element. Occupying the whole left side of the room, what seemed to be a giant, but sleek and refined computer filled the area. A massive center screen filled most of the space available and it showed a, of all places, a verdant meadow framed with a clear blue sky above. The officer and the researchers had been previously working with the aforementioned computer, well the researches had been anyways, the officer seemed to be hastily jamming something in his pocket as he turned around to us, trying (And failing.) not to look suspicious.

Jeena walked over to him, sighing exasperatedly as she did so. "Put the piece of toast somewhere else, Rallen, you'll just end up giving it to Komainu before we enter the Incubator and you should know by now what happens every time he gets his mouth around cafeteria food."

Rallen seemed disheartened at this. "That's a nice way to greet your partner." He said dully, walking towards a small black trash can. "And it was a bagel, not toast." He called across the room, stopping a few steps away from the trash can, taking out the warm, delicious, blueberry bagel and winding up to throw it in. I watched it fly into the trash can's lidless mouth, hitting a bulls-eye on the first shot, all the while mournfully aware of the lack of any breakfast of my own.

I was struck by a sudden, out-of-the-blue urge to get the thing out and finish it. Why the hell am I thinking like this? _(Great. Just great. First I feel like I want to attack the Commander, now I want to act like a hobo. What the hell is messing with my head today?)_ Asking a question like that of myself wasn't what really disturbed me. That was normal. It was the fact that I asked a question like that to myself and fully expected a rational answer from my subconscious that was the part that made me feel like I should get my head examined again, just in case I'd killed off the part responsible for sanity in that fall. _(Remind yourself again Kate, hearing voices inside your head is bad and a sign of insanity, which means you won't be able to see the Spectrobes if you don't shut up!)_

Thankfully, (I probably didn't want to go any farther down that path of thought.) I was broken off by something heavy stepping on my foot and then jumping right back off. My head came right out of the clouds and back down to Earth... or whatever this planet was called to focus on a small, scarlet-red creature as it scampered over me and ran over to sit at Rallen's feet, its giant, cinnamon-bun shaped ears seeming oddly out of proportion to the rest of its body. _(This was the Spectrobe that led Rallen to me.)_ I thought for a moment, staring intently into the thing's soft blue eyes.

It didn't look like much in the way of fighting to me, but there was an odd, intelligent, almost human quality to the way the tiny creature held itself, one that I knew could put any amount of brawn to shame. It was the same as what Triki always had, a pride and consciousness all of his own that set him apart from other Pokemon. I recognized that aura in this Spectrobe, and realized why Rallen had him as his search Spectrobe, (Someone else in the hospital wing was nice enough to explain that concept to me, it was like Spectrobes 101 in there.) even though others could find more things. It was because this one could be and was counted on to consistently think for itself, as well as obey, or when necessary, disobey sensible commands.

"Hello, anyone home in there?"

"Huh?" I jerked my gaze away from the Spectrobe to see Rallen, giving me an odd look again, like I still might be crazy. I'd been spacing out, again. That seriously needs to stop before it becomes a habit. "Oh... Yeah, I'm here." I muttered weakly, dropping my eyes and staring at the floor. What? The floor seemed very interesting at that particular moment.

"I was asking you if you were ready to enter the Incubator." Rallen prompted. "You'd be helping Jeena and I feed the Spectrobes and then pick out one for yourself."

I perked up immediately. Finally, I was going to see them! "Yeah, let's go!" Komainu yipped with excitement as well, happily frisking about Rallen's feet, although for him it might've just been the prospect of being fed. All creatures, no matter how intelligent, tended to share that particular reaction.

Jeena smiled at me. "Right. If you'll stand on the white plate in front of the computer, we can start the upload process. There are eight Incubator rooms and we'll be entering them in numerical order."

The first clue that something wasn't right should've been the word 'Upload', but I was too excited to listen. I placed both feet on the white panel, feeling a slight electric vibration as I did so, which was my second clue. Jeena stepped onto the mat beside me, with Rallen and Komainu joining us a second later. My third clue was the one I paid attention to, and also the one that was too late to do anything with. Rallen gave a thumbs-up sign to one of the watching researchers and he grinned a bit too widely in response, pulling down a large, crimson red switch as he did so.

The harsh sound of crackling electricity suddenly filled the entire area, blocking out all other noises. In a flash of slight panic, I felt my body lurch unexpectedly, like the ground had been shaken loose from under my feet. For a second, the room seemed to quake with me, and I tightly shut my eyes against the harsh light that was shining from ...the computer screen...?

The quaking stopped. I felt my feet touch solid and compact ground, but for the moment, still kept my eyes closed. If I was left floating in another one of those Arceus-damned darknesses again, I swear, I was going to kill someone.

Rallen's voice floated over to me from a couple of feet away. "It's okay, you can open your eyes now. We're inside the Incubator."

I cautiously did as asked. I was standing inside the meadow I'd seen on the computer. Jeena and Komainu were seemingly almost laughing at something. Probably me. "What's so funny?" I asked in a scathing tone of voice, my temper at not being told about what would happen getting the better of me. I'd thought that there was some kind of outdoor area where they kept the Spectrobes, not a computer program, assuming that was where I was. "No one told me that we were going through a wormhole."

The smile was wiped off Jeena's face as if I'd slapped her. That probably wasn't the best way to behave if I was going to be staying in this world for a while, but right now, I didn't care. "I was just comparing your reaction to the Incubator's assimilation system to that of Commander Grant's. They were remarkably similar, that's all. In any case," She turned away and started down a small slope to where Rallen stood, Komainu bouncing after. "We've got work to do. Follow me."

As usual, I did as asked, studying the environment around me as I did so. Everything felt real, but no puffs of dirt were kicked up by my shoes as I ran after Jeena, no scents emitted from the small flowers around me and there was no wind to bless the area with it's quiet murmur, not even a zephyr. You could still tell that this wasn't real life, but it was still pretty accurate nonetheless.

I caught up to Jeena and we quickly made our way down to knoll Rallen was standing, though the silence between us was somewhat dour. I probably shouldn't have burst out like that, but I wasn't going to apologize either.

"So what do the Spectrobes eat anyways?" I asked, directing the question to either of them, whoever wanted to answer.

Rallen indicated a large, white, plastic container to his left. "Look in there and find out. It's actually kind of interesting if you think about it."

I walked over to it, noting that Komainu was trying his best to get his head in there, but was too short to do so. It was kind of funny really. Inside the bucket were... Gemstones? "So Spectrobes eat rocks?" I asked Rallen, unsure of what else to say.

"Minerals if you want to use that term. But yeah, if he's hungry enough, Komainu'll start to eat just any rocks or metals around. He once tried to take a bite out of our Patrol Cruiser's wingtip!" Rallen laughed at the memory, but I noticed that Jeena didn't find it so funny and I could guess why. She seemed to be the main mechanic for the ship and that would've taken some time to repair.

"Still," He said hastily, quailing at the look on her face. "Let's get these guys fed so there's not a repeat incident."

Everyone took a handful of the polished-smooth minerals from the white bucket. They were all of the same three colors, red, green and blue. Jeena explained to me to give the red ones to the Corona Spectrobes, the green ones to the Aurora Spectrobes and, no prize for guessing, the blue to the Flash Spectrobes. She then joined Rallen a little while away in a flat, field area where a cluster of Child Form Spectrobes were already gathered around Rallen in a feeding frenzy. I moved little further away and whistled for attention, but none came near me.

A Spiko broke off from the main group, apparently forced out by the number of Spectrobes there. I walked a little closer to it, holding out one of the star-shaped, green minerals as I knelt down in the grass near it. At my approach though, the thing fled in apparent terror, its spiked tail flying out behind it in its flight as it ran to hide behind Rallen, who was too busy trying to avoid being trampled by the hungry mass of baby Spectrobes to notice.

It only got worse. Every single Child Spectrobe in this Incubator room was terrified of me and refused to come within a five-foot radius. In fact, the closest thing I had to an interaction with one of them was when a Torga decided to run my hand over, just for kicks. The thing let me get to within about a foot of it, and then charged at me, swerving to avoid crashing into the bracelet and somehow still managing to eat the Coronium mineral I was holding for it. To add insult to the injury, the rest of the Child Spectrobes (Except Komainu, he stuck up for me.) were treating it like it was a hero or something, when all the while I was cursing under my breath at the pain in my hand, and wishing that little punk Spectrobe a slow, painful death. Komainu came over and licked it, but it still hurt like hell. In any case, the gesture was clear and I appreciated it nonetheless.

Rallen walked over to join Komainu and I, Jeena giving her last mineral to a pair of pink and purple rabbit/shoe Spectrobes to share and following momentarily. I still had an almost full supply in my pocket...

Rallen was the first to speak. He seemed a bit disheartened, and to tell the truth, I felt that way too. "Well... I guess that none of the Child Spectrobes here really liked you that much."

Jeena at least tried to have a perkier attitude. "Don't worry. It wasn't a Child Spectrobe you needed to have with you anyways, it's only the Adult and Evolved forms that can fight." I suddenly felt pretty bad about bursting out at her like that. I'd been about the epitome of rude, and here she was, trying to make me feel better about my failure.

"Okay..." I said, not looking her in the eyes, although I did hope that what she said was true and the Adult forms would get along with me better. "If that's the case then," I added, trying to keep the poison of self-pity away from my mindset and replace it with determination. "How do we switch rooms here?"

It was Rallen's turn to act happy. I wondered briefly if he wasn't acting, if this wasn't his default mood, as he seemed to be pretty happy-go-lucky most of the time. "That's the easy part. If you look over that way.." He indicated the right side of the grassy meadow with his outstretched arm, where there seemed to be a small footpath leading into a dead end. "The trail leads you into the next room, or you can just try and concentrate on the room you want to be in, and the Incubator should transport you there, but that's a pretty sketchy feature and it's easier just to take the path."

Jeena took over from there. _(Do they rehearse this?)_ I wondered to myself, because they seemed to almost be able to read one another's minds. "This is the only Incubator room where the Child form Spectrobes are kept. The next room is for Aurora property Adult Spectrobes, we've currently got two in there, Spikan and Grilden. Spikan is actually pretty close to evolving though, so he might not be in there for much longer." It was impossible for Jeena not to conceal the hint of pride in her voice.

_(These are almost as much her Spectrobes as they are Rallen's.)_ I realized oddly. Whatever it might've first looked like, she too cared about these great beasts and for that alone, she went up several notches in my respect. "Awesome." I said, and I actually meant it for once. "In that case, let's go check these guys out." My enthusiasm for finding the right partner had been restored, but I figured that it might be best for Rallen or Jeena to exit the room first. I didn't want to be surprised by anymore NPP technology mishaps.

Again, like so many other things in the last couple of days, this turned out to be another bad idea, although I'm not exactly sure how I could've been able to foresee this one. Rallen and Jeena, reaching the end of the path, had just disappeared into thin air, presumably reappearing in the next room. I walked through, trying to do the same. For a moment, I felt the air start to shimmer in front of my eyes and the virtual wall that divided the two rooms give a bit, but then it solidified again, leaving me still standing inside the meadow room. I tried again, with the same result. After three more attempts and some swearing into the bargain, I was forced to conclude that the wall wasn't going to open for me, and that I was trapped inside Incubator room Nr. 1 until someone came to fetch me.

_(Oh well.)_ I thought cynically. _(At least, it's a pretty room to be stuck in. And I'm fairly important here, they'll find me soon enough... Maybe I can even get those Child Spectrobes to like me a bit more...)_

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**Hahaha... You thought she was going to get along perfectly with the Spectrobes, didn't you? Come on, admit it, you did! Nope, nothing's ever that easy...**

**I know this isn't my best chapter ever, I just got back from an ACDC concert at 11:30 and I'm a bit tired, but I still wanted to finish this off. As always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter and please remember to review!**


	14. The Second Room

Chapter 14

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**Hello again! This time, I'm being serious when I say that the plot is going to pick up, and also that the identity of Kate's Spectrobe will (Not) finally be revealed. Please enjoy and review after! I know there's got to be more people than just Kiraracat, Seedlo and 748152AuthorNicolaStarlaLilli reading this because my traffic log picks up about twenty people as a daily average. Do your part and review! In any case, here's the chapter so enjoy! Again, this chapter starts off in Jeena's POV.**

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As I walked down the dusty path, the meadow and open skies rapidly changed, the stubby grass growing into coarse undergrowth and thick-knit trees blocking out the horizon, their leaves filtering the bright light to a greenish glow.

For a moment as I looked back, I couldn't see Rallen, but he appeared momentarily, blinking at the sudden change of surroundings. We'd officially entered Incubator room Nr. 2, home of all of the NPP's Adult form Aurora Spectrobes. Not that there were very many of them ever since Maja had hijacked the Ancient Starship, but at least Spikan and Grilden were fairly good off in a fight when pushed. I scanned the forest, challenging myself, as always, to find the Spectrobes and break through their camouflage before they could notice us.

As a bright blue Spectrobe in the verdant green forest, Grilden was easy to find. Because of this, most casual observers would pronounce him a Flash Spectrobe, and indeed, it was only after Alodus's final, definitive judgement that the Grilda line was pronounced to, in fact, be Aurora Spectrobes through and through. He stood, one head peering up the branches of a large oak tree where it'd apparently found something interesting (In other words, shiny.) and the other suddenly sniffing around at the scent of minerals. Rallen had brought the bucket with him and it invariably attracted the attention of every Spectrobe that came within a mile radius.

Spikan however, was much harder to find. He was agile and strong enough to climb the lower branches of trees and with his thick mane breaking up his distinctive body shape, as well as his dark green coloration, the yellow markings only serving to further his camouflage, he was nearly impossible to find if he stayed still. The best thing to do was to look for the tail mace or the horns, and locate him that way, but he could pull his tail up into the leaves as well. I noticed a bit of movement in the trees near a small stream and immediately trained my attention there, but it was just a leaf, drifting languidly towards the forest floor.

One of Grilden's heads, the one who had scented the minerals squawked stridently to pull the other one out of its tree inspection. They both turned to face Rallen and I, their four red eyes almost glowing in the twilight-like condition as the began to waddle towards us, the giant blades attached to their arms being used as counterbalances.

Rallen ran forwards to meet them, calling their names happily. "Zack, Cody! How are you guys doing today?"

The normally cold and unfriendly Spectrobe returned his enthusiastic greeting with a bloodthirsty roar from both its heads, and then bent down its long, armor-plated necks to allow Rallen to give them a pat on the head, like he did when Zack and Cody were still a Child Spectrobe, Grilda, and had Tristan in the middle to make a proper hydra. He then gently led them over to the minerals and let them start to eat, watching that everything didn't disappear into their beaked mouthes and continuing to stroke them the whole time, tracing between the gaps in their armor and rubbing some white cream into an fresh battle scar on Zack's neck.

I smiled to as I went to join them. Rallen could be impetuous and reckless at times, but he really did care about his Spectrobes and they cared about him. _(Did that girl have the same relationship with her creature? She said that they were together for three years, so I'd guess so...)_ I imagined for a moment what it would be like if one of Rallen's creatures was killed like hers was and shuddered, not least of all because it was a very real possibility. The Krawl were ruthless and the Spectrobes were their natural enemies. _(No wonder she was so torn about it. Rallen still has hope that the rest of his Spectrobes are still alive along with Alodus and the Geo, he's fighting just as much to save them as Alodus himself.) _And if I looked at myself truly closely, then so was I.

"Hey!" Rallen looked up from his beast to grin broadly up at me. "Glad you could make it, but two of our little party seem to be missing." He looked up at the trees and whistled sharply. "Keigo, where are you? I'll let Zack and Cody eat your portion if you don't show up soon!" Rallen meant it in good nature, but Cody seemed to think him serious, as Rallen was forced to pull him away from the last couple of gemstones, earning an annoyed shriek from Zack in the process.

A strange sound, something between an ox lowing and deep-bodied bark emerged from a tussock of trees to the right of us, and sure enough, the heavy-built form of Keigo, Rallen's new Spikan hit the ground on all fours with a ground-shaking thump that shook leaves from the trees and left gashes in the ground from his spiked tail. He then crossed the distance between us in a couple of powerful bounds, his spiked tail wagging dangerously behind him in a mad imitation of an overenthusiastic dog as he skidded to a halt in front of Grilden and Rallen, spraying sod across everything. After practically covering the both of them in dirt (Cody didn't like that much, but Zack barely noticed.), he reared up on his short hind legs and Rallen jumped up to high-five him, landing on all fours a moment later.

I moved a bit closer and ruffled Keigo's coarse mane, feeling him almost purr and nudge his huge head up against me, hoping for more. You wouldn't guess it from his monster-like appearance, but Keigo was one of the friendliest Spectrobes I'd ever met, for all the world behaving like a pet dog to anyone he met. That is, until he met a Krawl. Then, you would be lucky to get him off of it before it was crushed to death by his sheer bulk. I stopped petting and when no more was was forthcoming, the Spikan mournfully stopped his nudging and solidly pushed Grilden out of the way to get to his food. I swear, Rallen had that thing spoiled rotten.

"There's one more member." I said, smiling at Rallen. "I didn't know he high-fived. Maybe you can show that to the new girl when she gets in."

"Maybe I will." Answered Rallen gaily, picking up where I left off and scratching the beast Spectrobe between the horns, to his intense pleasure. "But Spikan's my partner, hear that Kate?"

There was no answer, no sound even, but the heavy crunching noises of Keigo eating, and a low whine from one of Grilden's heads. Cody, I think.

"Where is she anyways?" Rallen asked, stopping his stroking to glance around the forest room. "Hello? Adult Spectrobes at twelve o' clock!" He called out, his voice echoing slightly in the near-silence.

I too, scanned the clearing. No sign of her. "Maybe she's still in the first room." I said tentatively. "She didn't look like she was the best with technology, the trip in freaked her out a bit..."

Rallen shrugged slightly, resting his hand back on the Spikan's shoulder as he straightened up, apparently having finished eating. "Can you check real fast? I was going to work on a new melee attack with Grilden." His tone was non-apologetic and he looked me in the eyes as he said it. "I'm trying to find out a way for him to take down some of the quadrupedal Krawl more easily using those giant arm blades he's got."

"Sure. I'll be back in a moment." I replied, concentrating on the first Incubator room and seeing the forest, along with Rallen and the Spectrobes start to fade out...

* * *

I charged through the short grass, trying to pick up a much speed as possible before I leaped and hit the wall. I'd given up on trying to connect with the Child Spectrobes (They still ran at first sight of me, again, except for Komainu, who'd decided to have some fun playing for once.) and had instead began testing the border for weaknesses. Once or twice, if I'd come at it with speed, I'd felt the wall start to give just a tiny bit, like I was breaking through. So, logically, I was led to the conclusion that, like many other things in life, if I hit it hard enough, it would break. Hence the flying tackles.

I pushed off and for a second, saw the scenery flicker a slightly darker green, felt the temperature cool as I entered the shadows of the trees. Then, the air in front of me pixelated and a powerful electric shock jumped through my body as I was thrown back into the meadow, lying twitching on the grass.

I hit the ground hard, gasping for breath as the wind was knocked out of me, the paralyzing effect of the vicious shock not helping. After a moment or so, the breathlessness subsided and I shakily pulled myself up to my feet again, part of me preparing for another run, a more sensible, more me-like, portion telling me to sit and wait. I followed the sensible half. Some of my still-healing wounds were starting to twinge, and I didn't want to rip them full open again. I flopped back onto the scrubby grass, staring into the holographic sky, waiting for something to happen, and sure enough, not a minute into my vigil, something did.

"Could you not find out how to work the transport?" Looking up, I discovered that Jeena had reentered the room. Finally, someone came!

I scrambled up off the ground, taking Jeena's hand to help me up. She was smiling in a kind way, as if I amused her.

"No," I admitted sheepishly, looking into her bright blue eyes with an apologetic expression on my face. "The thing wouldn't let me through and it zapped me when I tried." I said, leaving out the part that the electric fence was like getting hit with a Raichu's thunderbolt. Never happened to me before, but I can infer a bit from the expression on that Trainer's face...

"It shocked you?" For a moment, she seemed genuinely surprised. "That's only supposed to happen to Adult and Evolved form Spectrobes if they try and break through to the other rooms. Are you okay?" Wonderful. Just my luck...

"More-or-less." I replied, trying to blow this off as quickly as possible. I just wanted to find a Spectrobe and get out of this place. "My head's ringing a bit from the fall, but I can keep going. Can you ge-"

"Hold still." It was a order. I froze as Jeena pushed a button on a small black device strapped to the back of her right hand, part of her gauntlet with a flat green surface on the top. It flashed once, and her hand started ...glowing...orange... as a flat holographic ring of NPP gibberish appeared from the aforementioned green part.

"What are you going to do with that?" I asked nervously, keeping my eyes on the glowing hand. NPP technology hadn't been working out for me so well as of late. I didn't want that thing to explode in my face or anything.

"Just hold still." Came the business-like reply. Not very reassuring.

With a slight sense of foreboding, I followed directions. Jeena held the hand up a couple of inches away from me, and ran it down my body length, not making contact the whole time. As the thing, whatever it was, moved closer to the wristbands, I began to feel an unpleasant sensation of iciness in my skin there, only to have it disappear along with the the glow as Jeena cut off power to the device.

The screen popped up again for some reason and Jeena studied it for a moment, a confused expression on her face. This lasted for about twenty seconds.

"So... What exactly was that?" I asked tentatively, unsure if I'd screwed something up or not. With my luck, I probably had.

Jeena took one final look at the results, and switched the thingie off for good, the light from the green canopy fading into black. "That was my scanner. It can recognize galactic coding, allow me to manipulate certain kinds of technology, and, with an upgrade I installed after studying Alodus' Prizmod, can recognize DNA Structure in Spectrobes and determine quite a bit about them, property, form, and even a bit about how they act." She was looking at me intently, which was kind of freaking me out.

"So... Why exactly did you pull that thing out? I don't have any coding, there's no technology on me except for my Pokedex, and I don't think that I'm a Spectro-"

"Actually, according to the Incubator system's programming, you are." She had that cool tone to her voice again and with it, endeavored to place a giant roadblock in my train of thought.

I needed a moment to run that through my head, so to buy time, I managed to intelligently reply: "Huh?"

"An Adult form to be exact, with a colorless property. That's why you couldn't get through; an error in the system caused you to be labeled as an Adult form Spectrobe and it treated you as such." She stopped at the expression of sudden fear and worry on my face. If this was true then...?

"So, I'm a Spectrobe freak?" I was completely losing control of myself, the words came out more as a squeak than a coherent sentence.

"No!" A couple of the Child forms in yonder pasture looked around at the noise. Jeena had practically yelled out to get the message across to me over my freaking out. Noticing the effect she'd had on the inhabitants, she more quietly continued: "It was a malfunction in the system. They've been known to happen and besides that, Spectrobes are always of a property, never neutral. Something just short-circuted and labeled you wrongly so you couldn't get through. You might've taken a hint at the wording I used, 'an error in the system.'" She smiled again, but I saw slight concern under the expression.

"Oh." I muttered weakly, stopping hyperventilating as I did so. Ever since I'd come here, everything had felt threatening and I was on the jump because of that. That needed to end, preferably sooner rather than later. An organism that can't adapt won't remain it it's environment for very long. "Sorry... I've just kind of been on hyperalert ever since I got here and that was just the final thing to set me off." I made an effort to look her in the eyes and sound calm as I said this. No need to give anyone the impression of insanity any more than I just did.

Noting my efforts, Jeena replied in kind. "It's okay. I can understand that it would be a bit of a culture shock coming here, but it would be nice if you could try to keep that to a minimum. On the battlefield with the Krawl, if you start randomly spacing out, you'll get yourself killed and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?"

As I listened, I felt a brushing sensation around my legs and looked down to find Komainu rubbing up against my ankles, purring like a pet cat. _(Well, there's one thing.)_ I thought._ (Not all of them hate me.)_ The kind gesture put me in a better mood. "No, I guess not." I said, laughing lightly to myself.

Jeena knelt down and picked up Komainu, who had stopped vying for petting from me and started bugging her. He made himself comfortable in her arms and in a couple of moments, was asleep in a rather cute position, curled up tightly with his nose twitching slightly in his dreams. When he settled down, Jeena turned back to me and the conversation.

"The good thing about all of this is that it can be easily fixed. I can't directly change how the Incubator classifies you without heading into the hard drive and fixing the glitch, but I can disengage the security locks around you that 'as an Adult or Evolved form Spectrobe' keep you confined to one room quite easily."

"Awesome!" I said, most of my annoyance evaporating instantly. I hadn't screwed it up beyond repair and I was finally going to be able to choose a partner. "That's the best news I've heard all day! How long will it take?" I queried, mostly out of politeness.

"Just a second really." Jeena set Komainu down (To his intense displeasure and annoyance.) and again pressed the button that activated the scanner so that the green ring popped up again. She tapped a couple of the icons on it, aligned her hand with me and finally clicked a smaller black button on the side. The thing bleeped, and after about a second of waiting, a pixelated cone shimmered around me, only to break apart and dissolve instantly into the air with a quiet whirring noise, leaving not a trace of it's existence behind.

_(That was easy. How long is that going to last though?)_ "Okay... Was that it?" I said, halfway wondering if something else interesting was going to happen.

"Yes. What were you expecting?" Jeena asked, motioning me down towards the path, Komainu scampering along in front.

Walking beside her, I shrugged nonchalantly, figuring that it might not be best idea to give her my suspicions of lightning and fire.

Crossing the barrier into the next room, I felt at home at last. The great trees with their moss-covered trunks were a bittersweet reminder of Petalburg Woods, and Ilex Forest, both places where Triki and I had trained extensively, to the point where I felt exposed out of the safety of the timberline's shadows, the glimmering sun and vaulted sky almost forgotten, like a half-remembered-dream. And I wondered why people called me a freak...

"IKU ZE!"

I snapped out of my musings just in time to see Rallen sprinting through a small clearing in the woods as he leapt to deliver an overhand sword blow to some kind of hissing, spitting, two-headed blue hydra Spectrobe. The strike hit, but merely glanced off the creature's armored scales as it counter-attacked with a slash from one of it's bladed arms, forcing Rallen to skip back a pace or two. It pressed the advantage, swiping at Rallen a couple more times before he was able to roll out to the side and press his sword to the back of one of the things' necks. It froze instantly, and dropped it's blades in defeat, one head whining plaintively, the other craning around to stare evilly at Rallen.

I examined the creature intently. _(A dragon type?)_ Dragons had been prized among Trainers since the dawn of time, when properly trained, they were powerful, loyal and rare to the point of myth. It explained why two, maybe three, of the Elite Four from all of the regions used them and were nearly unstoppable for doing so. Hell, even my Pokemon's species, Sceptile, had traces of that type within them, as evidenced by the ability to use some of their moves._ (That might be a good one to choose, it's reasonably fast, well armored and besides the two heads, it has a body type and weaponry similar to Triki's so it'd be familiar to command. Now if I could only figure out if I refer to it in singular or plural terms...)_

A second Spectrobe I noticed, a giant, almost monstrous-looking, semi-bipedal creature with coarse, dark green fur marked with dull yellow streaks, a shaggy mane, two enormous, yellowing horns and a long, whip-like tail ending in a mace was standing off to the side, almost within the treeline. It was watching the duel, either having finished it's own session or waiting for Rallen to finish with the first Spectrobe.

He looked like he would be a pretty good Spectrobe to partner up with, with all that muscle and sheer bulk, he would be able to wade through ranks of Krawl, knocking them aside like so many dominoes, but I still would prefer the hydra-looking one. I mostly needed agility and speed in a Pokemon, not brawn. The hydra might not be able to get between the Krawl and bodyguard me quite as well, but I was fast enough to evade most attacks as long as I wasn't surrounded, and that wouldn't happen because I'd have a Spectrobe to at least partially clear the way for me.

With that in mind, I began to make my way over to the clearing where Jeena was already standing next to the mace-tailed Spectrobe, watching the renewed training fight. From the way she was cheering, I assumed that she was both pulling for Rallen, and also that he was winning. Keeping to the other side of the clearing, I got a bit closer to the fight and could get a better look at the hydra Spectrobe's weaponry.

Two enormous, deadly sharp, sickle shaped arm blades seemed to be his/their primary defense, but as the combatants traded blows and steps, I saw that he/they were also equipped with talons like railroad spikes on each paw and an large, arrowhead-shaped marque at the end of his/their muscular tail, which, like the rest of his/their body, was covered in rivets of scaled armor. If you ask me, it was pretty freakn' intimidating.

I leaned against a nearby tree and stared onwards as the two fighters tussled together for a moment, Rallen's armor preventing any serious wounding to him, and then broke apart. The hydra came off for the worse, panting slightly with both it's heads as Rallen jubilantly tramped over to Jeena and the second Spectrobe, both receiving him brightly, (And in the Spectrobe's case, affectionately.) with a congratulation from Jeena and a roar and some thumping noises from the Spectrobe, it was either wagging its tail or had jumped on Rallen. Again, I wasn't really listening, although from Jeena's laughter and Rallen's yelling, I figured that it was the latter.

I carefully eased my way out of the treeline where I was standing, trying to appear as nonthreatening as possible. The hydra was still standing in the center of the field, one head picking something out from between two of the plates on his arm, the other peering about the clearing in a gesture of lookout. I started to take out one of the Aurorium minerals from my pocket, as well as an Ultra Ball, (The NPP neglected to provide me with a Prizmod so I figured I would do this the old-fashioned-way.) when our eyes met. Ruby-red on blue, the red showing a tint of anger, and surprisingly, fear. The first head squawked hoarsely to the second and it rose into the air as well, hissing as it saw me and joining the staring contest.

I froze, stock-still and quickly wondered if the animosity that the Child forms felt for me extended to the Adults, rapidly deciding that I really didn't want to find out. I knew from my experience with Pokemon that if I ran, it would give chase, and that those giant blades would hurt a lot if embedded in my side. I also knew that Rallen and Jeena were watching by now, and that it was my job to find a Spectrobe and get back home where I belonged, so I was going to do it damnit!

My attention never leaving the dragon before me, I slowly took out the mineral and held it out to the creature, far enough away so that it had to walk a step closer to get at it. The hydra narrowed it's four eyes, took a wobbling step forwards, and suddenly slashed, forcing me to leap back and drop the mineral, as some kind of energy attack followed. I ducked out of the way, putting some distance between me and the Spectrobe as it bent down, cutting the mineral in half with a claw, and both heads having one.

Rallen walked over to me. "It's okay. Grilden hates everyone, even other Spectrobes. I get along with him okay, but that's because I was the one who actually awakened him."

"Okay..." I said, wanting to say something more, something that hinted that I believed him, but just didn't. I could believe that Grilden might be bad tempered, but I didn't think that he routinely took swipes at people to skewer them.

Rallen grinned broadly. "Cm'on we've got plenty of other Spectrobes here, there's sure to be at least one that doesn't hate you!" With that, I was pulled over to meet Spikan, which, ironically, turned out to be an even more of a metaphorical 'Dragon's Den' than meeting an actual dragon.

* * *

**Hooray, finally finished! Am I annoying you people with my long chapters where nothing important happens? Sure I am! As usual, please review, and a cookie to anyone who catches the YGOTAS reference!**

**Tchus!**


	15. The Incubator's End

Chapter 15

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**Hello again!**

**Sorry about the long update lag, I was suffering from a case of Writer's Block and this was a long chapter to write. Two weeks in and I was almost finished, but then there was camp for a long week and I couldn't work on it. In any case, I hope this is sufficiently good to make up for the delay, hopefully after this I can start with weekly updates, although no promises there. As always, review and enjoy the story!**

**This chapter is brought to you by my Flying Guineapig army. Don't like it? Too bad!**

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"Well, here's the last room. Jeena and I'll feed, and you can figure out if these ones are going to have a go at killing you while our backs are turned."

The breeze picked up midway through Rallen's sentence, forcing him to yell over a swirl of wind-blown sand. We had entered the 7th Incubator room, a rocky, insanely-hot, clay-and-sandish desert where all the Evolved form Corona Spectrobes were supposed to be kept (Actually, there were no Evolved forms right now, so it was being used as a second room for the Adult Coronas.) and Rallen was getting a bit exasperated. Even with the mini-sandstorm nearly cutting him off, I caught a strong sense of annoyance from his words. Jeena led the way into the center of the room, where a flat slab of rock functioned as a for them place to stand as she began to whistle to draw out the Spectrobes.

I couldn't blame him. For four straight rooms now, no Spectrobe had shown any interest whatsoever in cooperating with me, all of them employing one of the following tactics: A. Run at first opportunity, B. Use body language to warn me off, or C. Attack on sight. Painfully enough, the third choice seemed to the the most popular, and with every Spectrobe that I met, I began to appreciate exactly how good I was at ducking cover.

Sometimes that wasn't an option though. Room number 3, Flash, Adult form. All the Flash rooms were beaches with perfect white sand, mostly portrayed at midnight, with no cover but for the water. There, I'd found a Spectrobe that I could use, an enormous phoenix-like bird with intricate, blue-and-yellow plumage and a flaming red crest on it's head that made a Pigeot look monochromatic. Aoba, I think Rallen had called it. In any case, the second I got within a five foot radius, the bird took to the air, it's dragonfly-like tail carried stiffly behind it. I stared on into the sky where it vanished for a moment, mourned my ill luck and turned back to the shoreline to see if there were any other Spectrobes here.

At that point, I was pretty glad that I'd put in all that extra training against Bird Pokemon with Triki. Otherwise, I wouldn't have noticed anything until I had talons embedded in my spinal column. A slight whooshing noise came up from behind me and I leapt to the side just in time to avoid what looked like a bolt of blue lightning more than anything else as the Spectrobe dived to the ground, claws first, the wind generated by it's wings causing a wave of the soft sand to fly up in it's wake. The bird scrabbled on the ground for a moment, and looked venomously at me, a pair of black eyes staring into my soul. Then, with a hoarse shriek and a flurry of wingbeats, it was gone, as if the night sky had swallowed it up.

From that moment on, I was careful to keep on my toes, and to be able to sprint or dodge at a moment's notice, even if Rallen or Jeena told me that the Spectrobes inside were friendly. They never were, and eventually, I could sense some not-so-subtle scepticism on Jeena's behalf that I could actually command these things. This was the last room before the one where Rallen's Dark Spectrobes were kept, and some small part of me figured that after five rooms of hell, she might be right and I could stop asking for a mauling. The larger part of my judgement however, was too stubborn and prideful to break.

_(I'm a Trainer, aren't I? This is part of my job description, and I'm seeing it through til' the end if it kills me... Which it actually might...)_ I smiled bleakly to myself while thinking this, breaking away away from the two NPP officers who were pretty much the only two people who could stand between me and a not-so-pretty end on the sand here at the same time. I was acting masochistic about this, but I just wanted to find a Spectrobe that didn't hate me and get out of this computer program into the real world.

With that in mind, I started over to a nearby cluster of small rock formations somewhere in the northern quadrant of the room, a likely place as any to start looking. The largest was several feet above my head with a large, flat top, and striated rings of colors, just like a miniature plateau. Moving through a couple of the smaller formations, I noted that several of them were gouged with deep claw marks. This was not reassuring and did little to quell my uneasy feeling of being watched.

Something moved on the edge of my peripheral vision. I twisted around, looking for the source, but nothing came to light, although I didn't relax. The pillars and piles of rock would be a good place to hide and they would block me off from Rallen and Jeena's view, leaving me alone with whatever Spectrobes might be here. I backed up against a nearby wall, the red stone hot against my back as I pulled out the two things from my pocket that had failed to do me any good so far, but were still my only tools: an Ultra Ball and several of the red minerals, watching carefully for any sign of movement as I did so. There was no way I was getting jumped again. Not after what Zozane tried to do anyways...

There it was again. Something moved above me, but when I looked up, all that could be seen was the deep azure sky, contrasting greatly with the red sandstone I stood in. I listened carefully, alert for anything, and heard a soft- barely audible really, pawstep on the top of the stones, too high for me to locate it's owner. _(That at least answers one question.)_ I thought, already, albeit cautiously looking for a way to get atop the plateaus. _(This one can't fly, so no possibility of dive-bombing, but it's agile enough to lay an ambush for me while I'm on the floor.) _I smiled, exposing my canines in a grin most people would associate with a feral Arcanine._ (Well, two can play at that game.)_

I put the Pokeball and minerals back in my pocket, dug my fingers into one of the crevasses of a smaller plateau, and began to climb, eventually hauling myself onto the top. As I stood up on the edge and dusted myself off, the whole room came into view.

Rallen was about where I'd last seem him, in the desert portion of the room, attempting to ride something that looked like the unholy cross between a drag racer and a Charizard on steroids, and Jeena was dividing her time between laughing at the fairly ridiculous sight (The car/Spectrobe thing was riding low to the ground, Rallen was pretty tall and they were both kicking up giant clouds of dust, so it looked like something out of a rodeo.) and giving one of the few Spectrobes I recognized, a heavily muscled, mastiff-like creature called Komanoto, a belly rub. I noticed that it wasn't trying to rip her arms off and felt a strong wave of annoyance wash over me. (_What,) _I thought angrily. (Do_ they just specifically choose me to torment?)_

I sighed for a moment, and tried to put that thought out of my head. If I could find a Spectrobe, then that wouldn't matter and getting annoyed about stuff I couldn't change wouldn't help me achieve that end. Of what happened next though, there was literally no warning. I turned around slowly, dragging my feet out of residual fatigue and annoyance, only to find myself the target of a powerful flying tackle by a giant mass of orange and red fur.

There wasn't enough time to dodge. The impact of the full-on body slam smashed me to the ground, my breath knocked out as the Spectrobe landed on top, ivory canines bared and thick black claws pinning me to the ground, unsheathed. I yelled out in pain at the collision, involuntarily bringing my arms up to defend my face and other vital organs from a brutal assault of ...licking...?

That hadn't registered with me quite yet though. I felt playful nips as well as tongue and my adrenaline rush reacted for me. "GET OFF!" I yelled, managing to land a punch on the attacker's wet, black nose. I heard a yelp of pain and the pressure holding me to the ground receded as the Spectrobe backed off from me, giving me a chance to get my footing and examine the creature before me.

It's body was lean and sinuous, like that of a Persian's, graceful but still powerful. Short, almost metallic-looking, bright orange fur coated the Spectrobe's body, interspersed with maroon markings down the legs and back. Four golden, vaguely wing-like pikes were mounted on the lion's shoulders and haunches, pointed straight up into the air, but still soiled red with clay at the top, where I realized, they'd sunk into the ground on either side of my body.

A long tail festooned with a garish red flag the same shade as the markings lashed about in agony, something I could understand why when I looked at it's face, where a short mane of scruffy red hair concealed two small, spiked ears barely poking through, with what looked like an ornate golden spike centered on the high forehead. Two tawny yellow eyes were screwed up in pain the Spectrobe bayed loudly, trying to use a pink tongue to soak up the spill of a bloody slash on it's nose, one that was bleeding heavily and had already soaked the previously-yellow jawline.

I quickly got up, lamenting the lack of any Potions or bandages and instead pulling off my bandanna once again, with one hand on the Spectrobe's thick neck to hold it still, the other pressing the fabric into the surprisingly deep slash to stopper the bleeding. Unlike most of the other Spectrobes I'd seen, this one didn't fight or hiss or whatever. It just stood there like a stuffed horse, pitifully whining, but otherwise with no movement whatsoever, tail between it's legs. That didn't seem normal, but right now I had something else dominating my mind.

_(Did... I do that?)_ I thought, pressing the rag in further, although most of the bloodflow seemed to have stopped. _(Those bracelets are sharp, but I'd have to be holding my hand at a steep angle to do something like that, and I can barely land a punch regularly!)_ At a slight whine from the lion, I realized that I'd been pushing in to the point of causing it pain and accordingly I withdrew. The blood had completely stopped now anyways, but my bandanna was ruined ...Again... Seriously, what was that? Ever since I'd gotten my Trainer's License, that was like, the fourth time. _(Well..) _I thought dourly, parting some of the fur on the stock-still Spectrobe's muzzle to see if there was any more damage. _(That can't happen again... I won't let it.) _There was nothing else to clean, only a jagged stripe where my punch had connected.

I stepped back, mostly for the purpose of observing, because somehow, I didn't think that this one would attack. If it was going to do that, it would've tried it while I was pinned underneath, or even before that, would've just been more careful to nail me with those lances on the first pounce. One step back, and the thing's ears pricked back up again, the tail stood straight up in the air, and it clumsily walked over, knocking it's head against my legs with enough force to nearly knock me flat, purring slightly and generally just being friendly.

"Err... Hi to you too..." I muttered, unsure of what else to say. I'd just stabbed this thing in the nose and here it was, acting completely unlike all of the other Spectrobes, like I was it's best friend or something. Something was very wrong with this picture.

I reached down and scratched the lion's head, noting that the fur there felt like it looked, short and wire-like, not very good protection against the fangs or claws of a Krawl. There was a definite increase in the purring and I felt a raspy tongue licking my hand, only this time I wasn't jacked up on adrenaline, so I could enjoy it. I was crouching down to take a look at another one of the amicable Spectrobe's peculiarities, what looked like ruby-red anklets, again in the shape of wings, on the outsides of all four feet when I heard loud footsteps, in the gait of a sprint.

I stood up and turned away from the Spectrobe, curious to see who or what it was. The lion creature's ears pricked up as well and it stood straight, a Cheshire grin on it's face, so I figured that whatever was coming probably wouldn't try to hurt us.

_(Us.)_ I thought, rolling the familiar pronoun around my mind._ (Oh dear God, I'm thinking in plural form again, I don't even know the thing's name and I've already chosen it!) _A black-gloved hand appeared on the edge of the plateau and a second later, the rest of Rallen followed, leaping up with sword drawn and red hair blowing in a burst of ninja-like agility that I admittedly hadn't thought him capable of. Kind of stupid of me really, he'd told me that he had top marks in all physical courses the NPP offered or required so I probably should've expected something like this. Either way though, it startled the living crap out of me.

He landed on his feet, examining the scene for a millisecond before, like me, being forced to rapidly duck and cover as the Spectrobe executed another flying leap, although he was more successful in dodging than I had been. The lion dug it's claws into the ground to avoid being carried off the plateau by it's own momentum and smartly pivoted to land right next to Rallen, where it again attempted to jump on him, much like an unruly housedog would do.

"Lyoko, stop now!" Rallen yelled, and I'm still wondering how he did this without getting gored by the pikes, pinned the Spectrobe to the ground, holding it down by the base of the neck, right where the mane ended. He didn't let up until the struggling and thrashing stopped, and the Spectrobe whined slightly, at which point he got up, releasing the hapless lion as he did so. It looked like a workable if not very elegant training technique and the Spectrobe quickly got back on it's feet, still carrying a clueless grin on it's face as it stalked over to sit at my side, (A very new experience.) but not trying to jump or lick anyone either. I was still had a 'holy crap' mindset from the quick turn of events and as such, never did get to ask Rallen how he pulled that stunt off before he started talking.

"Are you okay? Did she try to attack you too?" Rallen's voice was one of surprise, but also of concern. Why he would be taken aback by a seeming Spectrobe fight was confusing to me, as well as the actual amount of fairly viable emotion in the last sentence. The rest of them had tried to murder me, why would he expect this one to be an exception?

"Yeah, I'm okay. She just jumped on me and tried to give me a tongue bath and I overreacted a bit." Shock had completely worn off, leaving weariness in it's place. "I'll assume that the yelling was what called you over here?" I finished lamely, attempting to at least sound inquisitive or at least thankful. I was dead tired and beyond annoyed and right now, I just wanted to get out of this place and into the real world, preferably into some sort of woods or treeline. Places like that always made me feel better. For now though, the enthusiastic tone felt fake even to me, so I could only imagine what it sounded like to Rallen.

Surprisingly, he plowed right through it, probably, now that he could see the purring Spectrobe sitting right on top of my rapidly-numbing foot, happy that at least one didn't hate my guts. How wrong I was. About the Spectrobe, I mean. Not the whole obliviousness to my trademark death glare, although he probably felt it on some level, but was choosing to disregard it for the time being. Somehow I felt that if this were Jeena giving him that look, he would take it more seriously.

"Well, you're right about the yelling. Jeena and I heard you from across the room and we split up to find you. She's probably still looking near the southern end, but she'll be here in a moment."

"Okay." Emotion signal zero for that sentence. I was fine with Jeena coming over, it wouldn't make too much of a difference anyways. Maybe I should've been happy, happy that I'd found a Spectrobe that didn't want to kill me, that was just a bit overzealous in affection, but something didn't seem quite right with this one's head. Just a hunch, but I'd learned to trust them, albeit with a grain of salt in the past.

"I'll take it that you-" Rallen suddenly seemed to spot the still-obvious, but no longer bleeding, slash mark on the Spectrobe's muzzle. His eyes widened slightly and he gave me an furious look. I made a quick mental note never to allow a repeat incident of this. "What happened? You told me that you overreacted, not tried to stab her!" He yelled.

I felt compelled to yell back. "She practically body-slammed me! I was getting crushed into the dirt, so I punched her on the nose to try and get her off of me, but the bracelet accidentally got in the way and slashed through! After that, I staunched the bleeding with my bandanna and then you showed up!" At the loud yelling around it, the Spectrobe shivered against my leg and miaowed pitifully, adding fire to Rallen's case.

"If I actually wanted Lyoko like this, I would've put her in with some of the other Spectrobes! They'll tear her apart without the use of excessive bling!"

That was it. I was unsure what I was angrier about, the implied meaning that I was the one who tried to rip her nose open, or the fact that he'd just said I was wearing 'bling'. Either way, I was aware that my voice was reaching levels of indignation and hysteria that would make a Loudred proud. "For the last time, I didn't do it on purpose!" My voice was hoarse from the extended volume. "My hand slipped, and the razor blades I've got grafted on each wrist did the rest! I'm sorry, and for your information, I care about what happens to the Spectrobes just as much as you do!" The lion Spectrobe had long since stopped the miaowing and quivered like a bowl of Jell-O near my feet, head hid under paws in the sand.

Rallen glared at me, and was about to snap something back, a final remark that never came out. Interruptions seemed alarmingly common in this universe.

"Rallen, relax already. I'm sure she didn't do it on purpose, and Lyoko's probably already forgotten anything out of the ordinary happened." We both looked up to see Jeena, who'd evidently joined the party while everyone was preoccupied with the yelling.

I saw the Spectrobe, Lyoko, I guess, was her name, at the sight of a new arrival, jump to her feet and make as if to pounce on Jeena like she'd done to Rallen and I, so I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck to keep her down, something that would've lost me a couple of fingers with any other Spectrobe here. Instead, she just sat down, still in that clumsy, puppyish manner that I'd seen of her so far, even going so far as trying to crane her head around to try and lick me again. What the hell is wrong with this thing?

While I was such occupied, Rallen and Jeena's conversation had gone on unabated. Rallen still sounded angry at me, but whatever Jeena had been saying toned that down a bit. Another note, almost one of sadness had entered his voice, and I was surprised to see him looking over at the Spectrobe, an expression of pity on his features.

"So, errr..." At this point, Rallen almost looked uncomfortable to speak. This was probably due to an annoyed Jeena standing almost over his shoulder, giving him a death glare, but something else was going on here as well. At least, that was what I thought. "I'll assume that you were going to partner up with my Leopuba, right?" Rallen stopped disquietly, waiting for my answer.

"It's not exactly a contest." I said warily, almost unconsciously placing a possessive hand over the Spectrobe's back. "Your other Spectrobes are out for my blood, this is the only one who's friendly and she looks reasonably well-equipped for fighting." I met Rallen in the eyes. "Is there anything _specific_ that I need to know about her?" I said, putting emphasis on _specific_. This time, I wasn't taking any chances.

Rallen shifted his weight from one foot to the other nervously before speaking. I chose to take this as a bad sign. "Lyoko, that's her name, she's a little bit, I guess you could say that she's kind of 'special'." He quickly glanced over at Jeena for help.

She took over for him. "You know that before Rallen can awaken the Spectrobes, they need to be excavated, right?"

"Yes. You told me that this morning during the conference." I made an effort to be polite while saying this, maybe this was what Jeena felt like during the preamble of my speech.

Jeena continued, now looking at the Spectrobe. "For the actual process of getting the fossil out of the ground, there are a couple of different tools we use, drills, blowers, hammers and in some cases, bombs or dynamite."

"Oh." I said, looking down and trying to block a mental image the immobile fossils exploding underground.

"There's also a tool designated for mineral use only, an automatic excavator aptly named the Giga Tool. However, using it on a fossil usually results in the fossil's destruction, due to the lesser Minergy content. Most of the time, the fossil's beyond any sort of repair."

Jeena spoke the next part with a bit of vehemence, so I figured that she probably knew the person in question. "A certain Officer, was ...unaware... of this fact and attempted to use a Giga Tool on a newly-discovered Spectrobe fossil discovered on Daichi, a lion-like Spectrobe that we now call Leo in it's Child form."

"So that means..." I said, the truth starting to hit me now.

"Exactly. Lyoko was able to survive because of a higher-than-average Minergy level, and because Grant authorized the use of Fossil Repair Spray. It took several containers to reconstitute the shards of rock into something Rallen could even try to awaken, and even now..." Jeena trailed off, letting me finish.

"There's something wrong with her?" I finished, unsure of what else to say and aware that I was still tightly gripping the Spectrobe by the scruff of the neck. "Can she still fight?" I desperately asked, immediately feeling stupid for asking the question.

Surprisingly, Rallen answered this in affirmative. "Technically speaking, she still can. The Fossil Spray repaired a lot of physical damage to her body, so she can move normally, even though she's not as fast or as strong as my other Spectrobes, but that's not the main problem." He hesitated for a moment before continuing. "She's kind of ...mentally retarded..., I guess would be the best way to put it. You saw when she was going nuts trying to jump me?"

"Yes." I answered, trepidation coloring my voice and thoughts. _(No wonder Rallen was so angry about the stripe I laid down her nose...)_

"That's how she reacts to everything, Krawl, other Spectrobes, humans, anything really. That's why she hasn't really ever left the Incubator, the Krawl would tear her apart in an instant." Rallen paused for a moment, before adding in a quieter tone: "Even my other Spectrobes pick up on it. She's shunned from their circles as well, the only other Spectrobe in this room is Torgazar and he can't climb up here to bother her."

Rallen straightened up and looked me full in the eye. "If you still want her as a partner, then we," He indicated Jeena and himself. "Won't stop you, but it might be best to think it over. I mean, she can't keep herself out of danger, so she definitely wouldn't be able to defend you in a fight. Once some Krawl get into the picture, Aoba or Zozane, I know you were looking at them, won't really care about anything else and all you'd have to do is keep out of the way."

He paused for a moment before adding, in a slightly more humorous tone of voice: "...Which you actually seem pretty good at..."

Normally, I would've been happy that someone noticed my dodging skills, which I was pretty proud of, but I had a different problem on my mind. Rallen had a good point. The Spectrobes were the only natural enemies of the Krawl, and most took their job very seriously, heeding nothing but a Spectrobe Master in the face of danger. They probably would just ignore me until the skirmish was over, at which point I could quickly recapture them.

It would probably work, but I balked at the idea. I'd never liked using Pokeballs as a Trainer, but I did occasionally if space didn't allow for Triki to walk with me, or if, I don't know, an Eevee or something came strolling down the path I was walking. This was different, though. If I missed the first shot at the Spectrobe, or it saw it and dodged, I had just inadvertently painted a bull's-eye on my chest, and hell, who was I kidding? Zozane was too freaking fast for me to scramble and after what I'd seen of Aoba, I didn't want to tick him off.

And... it just felt wrong morally to do that. Like I was one of those Trainers who raise rabid beasts for battle only, with no life outside the ring and just throw them away when they become too injured or old to fight anymore. This was for an actual cause, with method behind the madness, but it just felt too similar for me to do so.

That was what I was thinking of when I told Rallen and Jeena that I still wanted Lyoko, and that I could keep her safe. And as the ball snapped shut and the click sounded, even through a sense of heavy forbearing from all members of the party present, including myself, I felt a little burst of excitement at the sound of the lock. Whatever screwy crap might happen to me because of this decision, it had also given me one good thing.

I was a Trainer once again.

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**Ugh... Not so good, I know, but I needed a valid reason why Kate's Spectrobe didn't hate her guts, and I didn't want to do the cliched destiny thing. Either way, please review and be gentle on the flames!**


	16. On Darkmos

Chapter 16

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**Hello again! This is more-or-less a filler chapter, but I think I did a pretty good job of it. The reason it took so long to release was because I encountered a couple of plot inconsistencies, and had to redraw it completely from scratch. About the only thing that stayed the same is that this chapter is from Rallen's POV, so with that in mind, please enjoy, and review afterwards!**

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As a kid, I could never figure out why my friends kept telling me how lucky I was to be an only child. I thought it would've been cool to have a younger sibling to hang out with or something. Now, I know why they always said so.

"No offense meant, Rallen, but how can you stand to wear these things all day? It's hot, and there aren't any pockets for Lyoko's Pokeball."

Kate stood in the glistening white interior of my Patrol Cruiser's main cabin, examining the arm plating of an medium-sized, older-style suit of NPP armor that Jeena had managed to procure from God-knows-where. Maybe she had access to the Malletspace. The older version of the regular-issue NPP armor was several pounds lighter and nowhere near as good at repelling Krawl attacks as some of the more modern versions, but it was also the only set she could wear, being the only armor not to have gloves or a sword built into it. Even so, Kate had to knife off a bit of the fabric on the wrist seams to actually get it over the bracelets, which I swear were becoming more of a hassle every minute.

We'd reached Darkmos without event, unless you want to count the one snagged meteor on the portal over. Unfortunately, that also happened while I was piloting and signaled Jeena to wrench the controls away from me on the count of 'ruthless driving'... Honestly... In any case, copious usage of some of the ship's floodlights had allowed Jeena and I to land the ship on the Krawl-infested night side of the planet, a trick that Alodus had shown us. In the best of conditions, we would've touched down on the day side of the planet, but a scan check run by Jeena unsurprisingly showed the greatest concentration of Krawl energy on the night side, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what that meant. Maja was waiting somewhere in that hive of activity, and if we wanted to find her, we would have to go get her.

"Which is why anyone heading out of the ship needs to be have some protection." I said, trying to put some finality into the sentence to prevent further argument.

"Okay." She muttered quietly, seeming slightly downtrodden before perking back up again with another question. _(God...)_ I thought. _(Is this what Jeena goes through whenever I act like this? She just won't stop asking!)_

Thankfully enough, this one wasn't for me. "Jeena, if you're going, then why don't you have any Spectrobes or anything?" She queried, genuine curiosity shining through.

Jeena looked up from the ship's control panel, which she had been fiddling with. I'm sorry, fiddling is a bit of an understatement. The plastic housing had been screwed off and a tangled mess of wires greeted the eyes. Two clipped wires, a green and a black, had been pulled out of this ungainly sprawl and as she answered, Jeena placed a small, unheated soldering iron on the dash beside her.

She smiled slightly, a bittersweet sort of expression. "That's just it; I'm not going. In situations like this, with too many Krawl on the ground for Rallen to fight off by himself, and too many airborne vortexes for me to land the ship somewhere closer to the target, I stay in the sky to keep more reinforcements from pouring in, maintain contact with the NPP headquarters, and, if things get really ugly out there, provide air support in the form of a quick escape option." She shrugged nonchalantly. "Not the most dangerous job out there, but still necessary to do."

I rolled my eyes derisively. "Jeena," I said, trying for maximum patronization. "Stop selling yourself short. I'm somewhere in the top-ten list of the Flight Simulator's book of all-time records for most crashes for trying to do air support, and if I can't do it, then it should be impossible." I grinned at the last statement, trying to get a laugh out of my seriously-minded partner for once. She half-smiled, which I figured was the best I was going to get for now. Her reaction wasn't a surprise, but I still felt my hopes sink back down after letting them bubble up that little bit. If only she would realize...

I was brought back down to reality by our resident Spectrobe punching bag, who seemed to forgotten any qualms she had against wearing the armor. Wow. So lectures do have a purpose in life. I'll probably still ignore the ones Grant gives on Tuesdays to the new recruits, but it's good to know that they serve some function.

"So... I guess, when are we leaving?" She asked, clearly uncomfortable with breaking the silence of the cabin, eyes flicking back and forth between Jeena and I, as if trying to figure out who exactly to ask.

"Anytime, now that I've finished recalibrating the weapons and lighting systems." Answered Jeena almost absentmindedly, once again focusing on soldering the ends of the two wires together and restoring the housing to it's original place.

Kate silently did a victory pump in the air and ran over to the bay door, fidgeting impatiently for them to open. Before we left though, there was something I needed to take care of. "So, we're leaving now." I said pointedly to Jeena, who had succeeded in making the dash look like nothing ever happened there.

"I know." She said, taking a hint and getting up to walk over with me to the bay door, punching in the opening code on the wall keypad. The ramp slid down, causing our team Maverick to lose her balance and pinwheel wildly to avoid falling into the thick, unappealing, purple sludge outside.

"Rallen, be careful out there." There was a surprising amount of emotion in that sentence, more than I'd heard from her for a while. Maybe hope wasn't lost after all.

"I will be." I said, a little more solemnly than usual.

She sighed slightly and I had the feeling that I'd said something wrong. "I'm being serious here." Any traces of the quiet tone she had before had vanished. This was normal Jeena, all business. "Maja trounced you last time, and there aren't exactly any ancient space ruins to help you out now."

A annoyed protest bubbled up, but before I could express it, Jeena stopped me. "I know you've been training your Dark Spectrobes to the limit of their abilities, but there's only so much you can do in a short time, and who knows how long Maja's had to work on hers? That," She lowered her voice slightly, presumably so that this would be unheard. "And the fact that you've got two extra charges on your hands, Kate and her Spectrobe. We both know Lyoko can't really fight, and the girl looks willing to put herself in danger to keep her Spectrobe safe."

She looked me full in the eye, her blue eyes like chips of ice. This conversation was not going where I wanted it to. "Maja will take advantage of that. She tried to kill her once, and I don't think that she'll object to doing it again, especially if it brings you down as well." A bit of the fiery energy in her words and poise seemed to drain. "So... Just... Be careful out there." She smiled bleakly. "Just don't get yourself killed, because we still need you here."

That was a bit more like the Jeena I knew. "I think I can manage that alright." I said, mock-saluting. "Don't worry, I'll finish this up and we can get back up to the cantina in time for macaroni night!" I stepped off the ramp to join Kate in the cold, tacky mud as the cruiser began to rise into the air, Jeena calling something back, but was drowned out by the humming of the engines. The floodlights slowly died out, leaving Kate and I standing in an empty, twilight-lit clearing, chill rapidly setting in. I watched the ship slowly fade out of sight, swallowed up as if by one of the abnormally few stars shining in the sky.

"Right." I said, turning back to Kate and shaking myself out of a slight daze. She obediently gave me her full attention, tracking my every move. "We're about two miles away from Maja's current location, if the scanners were right anyways, and Jeena can keep us filled in on any updates. Ready to go?"

"Always." The low light made it a bit harder to see, but you could definitely make out a lop-sided smirk on her face, something that made me rethink this girl. She was enthusiastic about doing this, and wanted the fight to start, despite being at clear disadvantage. Something was off-kilter here, but I couldn't think of what would be wrong. _(She said she's a Trainer.)_ I thought, trying to find an answer for myself._ (She must've done a lot of fights like this where she came from, that's why she wants to get moving.)_ From somewhere in my mind came her own rushed exposition of the dream she'd reportedly had, but I tried to brush it aside. _(If I'll remember correctly, she was probably stoned on painkiller right then, so that's the reason for the psychotic behavior.)_

"Ummm, Rallen? Should we be concerned about that?"

I snapped out of my meditation instantly, whirling around to face the girl, who now, to my slight relief sounded worried. It was a good reason too. Emerging from a thicket of skeletal trees, a giant Krawl vortex slowly approached us, branches snapping off and being consumed by the black-and-purple mass. Krawl dust whizzed around it, all snapping teeth or pointed spikes, so the thing looked like some giant evil atom model more than a Krawl.

I grinned like a maniac. It was about time things started heating up. "Nope. They stop being so menacing after about fifty or so times of seeing them. They're the ones that should be worried."

With that, I charged, my Prizmod activating and releasing Aoba and Zozane, who appeared on either side of me in fountains of colored light, matching my speed exactly (Which is actually a pretty big deal with Zozane.). My sword materialized and I held it aloft in an overhand swing as I plunged into the vortex, screaming hoarsely as I did so.

"IKU ZE!"

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**Yeah, I know. Nothing of importance happened. I think I'm getting a bit better at doing dialogue and keeping people in-character though. What do you think? As always, please review! Bye!**


	17. First Encounter

Chapter 17

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**All right! Finally, I can start with some action and/or plot exposition! Either way, please enjoy and don't forget to review afterwards.**

**This chapter is rated T for unnecessary Spectrobe violence! What fun! Kate's POV.**

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Rallen sprinted forward and leapt into the vortex, screaming like a maniac the whole time. His two Spectrobes, who thankfully didn't seem to notice me, followed him unhesitatingly, flanking him like bodyguards. After a second to steel myself up to the task, I took a deep breath and less-gracefully followed, running at and hitting the vortex shoulder-first, like trying to bash down a door. The wet, clammy surface offered much less resistance that I'd thought it would, and I ended up falling face-down in the mud into an area that seemed to spit in the face of just about every law of physics that I knew of, and then some.

I sat up and clawed the muck out of my eyes, trying to figure out if this was for real or not. As my vision came clear however, I was forced to accept what I was seeing to be true: The inside of the vortex was a hell of a lot bigger than the outside. I sat on the edge of a large arena, the walls formed by more of the swirling, but somehow solid black vortex. In the center, Rallen and his Spectrobes were squaring off against a tightly-packed group of Krawl, not the larger red ones I'd remembered seeing, but smaller, dull-red, vaguely-dragon-shaped, floating ...heads...?

_(Okay...)_ I thought, watching Aoba smash one of the Krawl clear out of the sky with a single swing of his tail. _(These things don't look so tough.)_ The Krawl knocked to the ground seemed to become all teeth, snapping and snarling at the approaching Zozane, who simply danced out of harm's way, sprung up, and savagely ripped the Krawl to pieces in a whirlwind of claw and fang. Rallen cheered and fired a shot off his blaster to finish the job.

I grinned wildly to myself and got to my feet, clicking Lyoko's Pokeball out to it's full size. _(If I work with her, then we should be able to take down at least one of them.)_ With that, I scanned the arena, looking for a single Krawl that I could separate from it's fellows. As it turned out however, there was no need. Aoba's next attack scattered the yammering pack of heads in every direction, with one catching sight of me standing here, apparently defenseless. It made a beeline for me, jaws clattering like one of those wind-up dentures as it narrowly zoomed under Zozane's death swirlie thing, although the catlike Spectrobe didn't give chase.

I waited for it to get within a reasonable range, and threw my ball, the black-and-orange object landing squarely inside the Krawl's oversized mouth with a strange, plinking noise. _(Oh crap.)_ I thought worriedly, knowing what was going to come next. _(Not intentional!)_ The dragon-like head suddenly stopped its offensive charge right in front of my face, closing its mouth and hovering uncertainly in midair. Red light shone from between the gaps in the the Krawl's fang-studded jawline and in what seemed to be an instant, the head was nearly flipped inside-out trying to keep a grip on a bucking, five-and-a-half-foot long, 600 lbs. plus, female Leopuba.

In a frenzied panic, Lyoko reared, horselike, as the Krawl dug its teeth deeper into her flank, drawing drops of blood and chilling caterwaul from the beset Spectrobe. I, not wanting to get beamed by my own partner (Again, those lances weren't something I'd like to see up close.), but knowing that something had to be done, watched for an opening, poised and ready to pounce. After a moment of standing upright, Lyoko's hind legs trembled slightly, and she collapsed back onto the ground, sending mud spraying everywhere. There she lay for the moment, her wild screaming having faded into hoarse panting and an insistent whine of pain.

I seized my opportunity, jumping in there and grabbing the miniature Krawl, ignoring its unpleasant, clammy texture, and trying to break the pair of jaws off my partner. To my surprise, after a moment of straining and trying not to accidentally sink my fingers into the thing's heavyset eye sockets, they broke right off. Lyoko immediately stopped whining and looked happily over at me, somehow blissfully ignoring the large-but-shallow slash marks down her ribcage. In a normal situation, I would've taken a second to appreciate this and wonder what exactly the hell was wrong with her, but again, I had more important matters to contend with.

The Krawl snapped wildly around in my hands with a metallic clicking, startling me to the point of dropping the thing and letting it go. It then lost no time in whirling around and clamping on in Granbull-fashion to the nearest possible target: Me.

I yelped (Yes, I mean it, I yelped.) in surprise as the Krawl latched onto my arm, exuding a surprising amount of PSI for something so small. Thankfully, I still had on the armor Rallen made me wear and the thing's fangs were locked around one of the thicker plates on the lower arm, so it wasn't like I was going to be an amputee anytime soon. Still, I could already feel the points of those same fangs starting to slide past the plastic elements and painfully worry away at the softer fabric beneath, and if I didn't do something soon... (_Well, it's a good thing I'm left-handed, right?)_ I thought, in what should've been an ironic tone of voice, although right now, it sounded more panicked, or rushed than anything else.

I punched, (Well, tried to anyways. I told you, hand-to-hand is a no-go for me.) wildly at the thing, aiming mainly for the eyes, quite unlike the last time. I know I got in at least a couple good hits, but the Krawl's only reaction was to bite in deeper, the crackling, ripping sound of tearing fabric and a flash of white pain testifying to its efforts.

I cried out again, looking down at my arm to see a tiny splash of scarlet blood trickle through the Krawl's fangs. My blood. As if it had finally cleared some mental barrier, anger suddenly shone through my panic, wiping out all traces of the pain from my consciousness and replacing it with the innate animal instinct to survive that we all have buried deep within. Dimly crossing through the back of my mind was that separated feeling again, like something else was in control, but I didn't care. This felt good.

In a sudden bout of bloodlust, I raised my unhampered arm to deliver a final blow, with the full intent of skewering the Krawl on one of the spiked rings, breaking my promise with Lyoko in the process. I eyed the thing hungrily, teeth bared and already envisioning the screaming it would make. For a moment I hung there, giving it a chance to back off, as well as enjoying the spark of fear in it's piggish eyes as my blood literally dripped onto the ground, oily atop the slick mud.

Doggedly, it stayed. _(Well, that's too bad for you, isn't it?)_ I thought, before making the final strike that never landed.

Lyoko smashed up against me, presumably having gotten over (Or forgotten about.) her respective injuries. The heavyweight blow knocked me flat to the ground, and just like the last time, Lyoko landed on top, presumably intent on covering me in drool. Unlike the last time however, some part of me, probably the one without the weird mental problems, had enough sense not to try and take a stab at her. A hind paw landed heavily on my stomach and even the attacking Krawl took a backseat as the breath was knocked, coughing, out of me.

I frantically tried to breathe back in, the unnatural rage and cruelty of a second ago vanished completely, leaving me weak on the battlefield. Lyoko's weight shifted atop my abdomen as the pressure on my arm suddenly drastically increased and abruptly faded, accompanied by a series of worrisome crunching and squealing noises.

_(Did she just...?)_ I thought, unsure if I wanted to get back up and see whatever was happening there, annoyingly just out of my eyesight. A particularly violent snap, like that of a bone being broken, rang out from somewhere to my side and with an uneasy lurch, I tried to ignore the pain in my arm and the continued lack of breath in my lungs to forcibly pull myself up into a seated position.

Lyoko was splayed out over my legs, chewing happily on what was left of the Krawl, which, judging by the weak yips of protest it emitted, still seemed to be (Barely) alive. The Spectrobe looked over at me and wagged her tail in a friendly sort of manner, grinning as if to say: _Lookie here! Check out this thingie I found on you! Isn't I great?_

My eyes widened in disgust as the Krawl, missing several chunks of it's upper jaw, feebly tried to escape back into the air, only to be swatted back down, Lyoko locking her jaws around it in a death-grip around it's fading girth. This was not what I had hoped to see.

"No!" I croaked out, reaching out to try and swat my Spectrobe away from the nearly-dead Krawl. "God damnit, you don't _eat_ them!"

Lyoko, in surprise, dropped the Krawl at her feet and looked back up at me, pink tongue lolling out of her mouth in that classic slack-jawed village-idiot expression. I cursed to myself and managed to wriggle out from under my Spectrobe, who thankfully seemed to have gotten the message that she wasn't supposed to ingest alien life forms, although she was still looking curiously at it as it laid there at her feet.

Still muttering to myself, I took stock of our surroundings. Rallen was nowhere to be seen. This struck me as odd, and an initial flash of fear struck through me as I realized that, with no bandages, no guide, no reliable partner and bloodthirsty creatures on the loose, exactly what kind of situation I'd gotten myself into.

I began to hyperventilate as the pain in my arm finally began to fully make itself known and I nearly jumped sky-high as the Krawl, forgotten with Lyoko at my feet for a second, exhaled one final death moan and dissolved into a wisp of acrid black smoke. Instantly, the arena walls disappeared, revealing the muddy, skeleton-tree studded Darkmos terrain (To be honest, it wasn't much different from the Krawl vortex.). My heart rate slowed to normal, and the blood oozing from between the plates and ripped fabric of my armor slowed almost to a halt, almost already staunched, although it still hurt like hell.

_(Okay, just remain calm.)_ I thought, taking a deep breath and looking around more throughly for my guide. _(No need to do anything stupid, you've been out at night plenty of times with Triki, this can't be too different, can it?)_ Imagining some of the possibilities in which it could, I decided not to answer that.

In the eerie silence of the night, I faintly heard someone call my name, and all my attention quickly focused in that direction, down a thin path leading into the trees where the vortex had appeared from. I quickly weighed my options, decided that anything was better than playing sitting duck here out in the open and called back, before painfully starting to slog over through the cold, ankle-deep mud. Exhaustion, the kind that comes from pure extended energy loss (Two words, people: Giga Drain), tugged at every part of my body, although I wasn't sure exactly why. I hadn't been doing anything particularly strenuous and as a rule, I tended to have pretty good stamina.

_(But if that's true, then why the hell am I feeling like I've just hiked Mt. Chimney?)_ I thought as I entered the thicket of dead branches and uneven stumps. _(I mean, aside from the obvious...)_

A powerful nudge, more of a headbutt, to be honest, threw me off balance and I grabbed one of the thicker branches in the tunnel-like area around me to keep balance as my already-weak legs very nearly turned to jelly. I unsteadily swung myself around to see Lyoko bringing up the rear, drooling as usual and seemingly still unaware of her injury. She whined happily and got down into a pounce position, probably expecting me to play with her. I, rather wearisomely, ignored the expression of ignorant cuteness and wasted no time in returning her to her Pokeball before starting back on my way.

_(If she increases travel time or threatens to cause me accidental physical injury, she goes back in the ball.)_ I thought with a slight roll of my eyes as I caught sight of Rallen at the end of the bracken tunnel. He, probably hearing me as I laboriously clambered through a particularly stubborn cluster of branches, looked up from where Komainu (Where did he come from?) was snuffling around in the mud and quickly waved me over, excitement in his eyes.

"What took you so long? Zozane and Aoba took out most of the Krawl with a combo, and once I got out, Komainu started going crazy and I chased him down here." He looked at me cautiously, and I stiffened involuntarily, aware of how my skill set must be looking to him right now. "I thought you could keep up behind me. Did Lyoko slow you down in there?" Komainu sat down by his master's side, solemnly gazing up at me with those beautiful blue eyes as if to further Rallen's point.

Both a continued lack of breath and a general feeling that some things were best left unshared led me to give Rallen the shorthand answer. "Yeah. A Krawl hit Lyoko and I pretty hard, and it took a while to get rid of it. Took a chunk out of my arm too," I slipped the blood-slick bit of plating higher on my arm to display said wound, not dropping my defensive posture. "And if you've got any bandages for that it'd help a lot."

Rallen looked at me strangely for a moment, but all the same, he pulled off a small pack that fit invisibly into his armor, opened it and threw me a good-sized capsule of green gel. My dead body didn't move fast enough to catch it, and it dropped onto the mud at my feet. I bent down to pick it up, dimly aware of Rallen talking in the background.

"It's a container of medical gel. Ask Jeena for the specifics, but it'll temporarily seal over any open gashes and keep your cut clean. It works on Spectrobes too, if Lyoko's got anything wrong with her after a single fight."

_(Right. I'll do that in a minute, then.)_ I vaguely thought, my fatigued mind zoning out into space. I mechanically opened the capsule, took out some of the gluey liquid, and spread it out over my bite, feeling an immediate and blessed cessation of pain as the sounds of digging and drilling, as well as Komainu's high-pitched yipping, echoed in the background.

_(This works way better than Oran or Sitrus.)_ I mused, idly staring down Lyoko's marble-sized Pokeball, taken from out of my pocket. _(I should probably do her while I have the chance...)_

I clicked the ball to it's full size, finger on the button and ready to release. Having learned from past experiences, I pointed the ball away (What? I've learned from a couple of unpleasant experiences.) from my face and had nearly opened it when a loud exclamation from Rallen drew my attention away for a moment.

I swung myself wearily around, placing Lyoko's Pokeball back in my pocket and trying to tune myself back into the world again, expecting only to see Komainu and Rallen. What I actually did see was similar to that, but with one minor difference that intrigued me.

He and Komainu were crouching at the edge of a small pit in the ground, one that was rapidly filling up with sludge, but with the glint of something golden trudged up from the depths. I, blatantly trying to ignore an urge to sit down some and fall asleep, crouched down with them, following Rallen's hands as he pulled out the flat, angular object, and watching his face as a wave of recognition, almost reverence stole across it.

I had to ask. "What... Exactly is that ...thing...?" It's design seemed familiar to me, but for the life of me, I couldn't find a name for it.

Rallen seemed to take a moment to really hear me.

"It's... Alodus' Prizmod..."

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**Hooray! After two-and-a-half months of Writer's Block, I finally managed to grind out the last part! Yes, if it sucks, please tell me, because I honestly can't tell right now. I'm writing this on sugar energy right now, and I really need some reviews! PLEASE REVIEW!**


	18. Of Holograms and Explosions

Chapter 18

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**Hello! It is I, back again with the eighteenth chapter of this wonderful fanfic! *Cough, Cough* I'm sorry, all that dripping sarcasm was making me choke. Anyways, I have a problem! For the last chapter, in all it's semi-interesting glory, I only got one review, and the oneshot I posted a couple nights ago was even worse! Nothing! Please, review, I'm begging you! Rallen's POV.**

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Alodus' Prizmod. I'd found it. I looked, absorbed, at the tiny golden object, half expecting it to flip open and show me something, a sign or message maybe, that my friend, mentor, whatever you'd call him, was still alive. Several moments passed and nothing was forthcoming, though I still held it clenched tightly in my hand.

Komainu whimpered slightly at my feet and I phased back into real life. Both he and Kate were looking oddly at me, as if unsure what to say. Kate recovered first, speaking hesitantly and dancing around the subject, probably afraid of breaching a sore subject. That was getting annoying. Why couldn't she just say whatever she wanted to say and get it over with?

"So... He's alive?" She tentatively asked, cringing as I looked over at her.

"Maybe." I said cautiously. Maja was no idiot, and despite Jeena's opinions about my intellect, neither was I. She and Jado had already fooled us once, and everyone knows the saying that goes along to that. "She could've taken it from him and dropped it here for me to find on purpose, and in that case, we'd be walking right into a trap."

An expression of worry flashed across Kate's face, only to be suppressed a moment later with a couple of deep breaths. That impressed me a bit. _(Under different circumstances, she might make a good NPP Field Officer. Well, maybe if she would stop flinching every time someone looks at her...) _I mused lightly, noting her continued attentiveness to me. To be honest, it was rather like having a second Spectrobe outside the Prizmod.

I figured I'd put this asset to use. "Right." I said suddenly. She flinched slightly and looked me in the eye, the movement sharp enough to warrant a salute.

"Yes?" Came the reply.

"We need to get moving. That fight will have drawn every Krawl in the area to our location, and if I'm going to be heading toe-to-toe with Maja, all my Spectrobes need to be at full strength. We can keep walking, and while we're on the move, I'll tell Jeena about Alodus's Prizmod. You just need to keep watch and tell me if you see anything odd. Got it?" I said curtly.

"Got it." She answered, the prospect of a job seeming to erase some of her fear. "First sign of movement, I'll let you know." She started towards the bracken tunnel where we entered, but I quickly called her back.

"There's an easier way." I said, grinning at her before motioning to stand back. She turned tail and skipped a good couple of paces behind me, eyeing me oddly and flicking her head around to check behind her for a perceived vortex. I set my weapon to the 4th and highest gear, often called the 'deep frier' for a glitch in the system that could cause it to randomly explode on you, but still a powerful enough blaster to take care of most foes. For a moment, I held down the trigger to charge a stronger bolt, one that would rip through these dead trees and stumps, and hopefully produce enough light to repel any Krawl in the nearby area, at least for a little while.

In the darkness, a ghostly green glow gathered at the blunted muzzle of the weapon, and as I leveled it with where I wanted to shoot, Kate took another two steps back away from me, lookout duties forgotten. I ignored this and let the shot fly, like a shooting star streaking towards its target for a moment, and then, a second later, a huge explosion that rang out across the landscape.

When the smoke cleared, an entire portion of the bracken had been disintegrated, leaving a jagged hole for us to exit from. As I rung up Jeena and filled her in on the current situation, it was difficult not to notice Kate's look of sheer incredulousness as she fleetingly looked over the damage done to the still-smoking branches. She then glanced over at my blaster and and held up a second, just to keep some distance between it and herself.

"Rallen, are you still paying attention?"

Jeena snapped back up at me from the hologram and I gave her my full attention. I mean, she's the one doing the reports to the Commander, so it was probably best for me to listen to what she was saying. I'd prefer not to bungle a mission, as bad as that is, and _then_ have a note off to the side saying how my short attention span (I resent that, by the way.) resulted in that.

"Yeah Jeena?"

She rolled her eyes momentarily before continuing. "I updated your coordinates, and you should be within half a mile southwest of Maja's location, give or take a bit. She's still waiting for you, but whether that's good or bad, I can't tell. Proceed with caution."

I decided to take a chance on humor. "You know Jeena, you've really been spending too much time on work. 'Proceed with caution'? That's a phrase straight out of the handbook. You of all people should know the dangers of plagiari-" I cut off at the look she was giving me. Obviously humor wasn't the best thing to try right now. "Right," I rectified. "We'll start in that direction right now. I'll see if I can't get any information about Alodus from her as well."

She sighed slightly. "Good. Just remember, if you need backup, I can't help you there, so you'll need to somehow move onto the day side of the planet if you need an evac." She paused for a moment, as if to flick off communication. "And please, keep Alodus' Prizmod safe. We need to run a scan on it back on Kollin, and it won't work if it's damaged." With that, she hit a button and the screen flickered into nonexistence.

I grinned wryly to myself. _(And how could I have forgotten? Jeena, master of tact.)_

I looked back to see that Kate was still two or three steps behind me, dutifully keeping lookout, but with one eye always on my blaster. I motioned her on, and we slowly started off in the direction specified, footsteps squelching with every movement. Within a minute, the trees had gathered around us again, but thinner and sparser this time. They formed what almost looked like an arched entrance into what I could tell was a cleared, bowl-shaped area, similar to that of an arena.

Kate finally got a bit closer to me, moving slowly and semi-crouching as not to make quite as much noise. "Is this the place?" She asked, curiosity and a hint of fear coloring her voice.

"It should be." I said, trying to get a better look into the area. I swear to God, it's like the trees were purposely keeping me from seeing anything. Kate picked up on what I was doing, and started looking as well, squinting slightly. Still nothing.

I stood up. Kate looked at me madly, eyes asking the question without a single word: Are you crazy?

I answered louder than was needed, my voice carrying in the silence.. "She knows we're here." I said, starting up towards the one break in the trees. Reaching this spot, again, with Kate several steps behind me, I finished. "Don't you?" For all the world, I was talking to an empty clearing, and echoes resonated throughout the area.

After a while on a battlefield, you start to develop an awareness for the smallest of noises and things out of sorts. Either that, or you die. The slight sigh emerged from behind me, and the whoosh of something moving through the air. Instinct moved my body for me and I instantly leapt down the shallow hill, out of range of the light-purple tentacle that had tried to ensnare me.

The thing retracted, and from the shadows, a figure emerged. A long, flowing-but-tattered cloak flapped madly in a phantom breeze and the curiously feminine form of Maja became visible. Held carelessly to her side was Kate's prone body, feet just barely skimming the ground, even while being held in the air.

Maja smiled venomously, white teeth that looked like they had been individually sharpened flashing slightly. "Well, well, well, look what the cat dragged in." She purred sweetly. "I remember your other assistant being a bit more ...proficient... in the art of self-defence, but I expected no less from you, Rallen."

"Put her down. Now." I said through gritted teeth. If she thought she was going to play any more of those mind games she played last time with me, then she had another thing coming.

"Now why would I ever want to do that?" She shrugged and threw her palms up, false innocence layered heavily in her tone. She suddenly smirked at me, scorn openly shown. "Because you'll make me? No, I don't particularly think that's going to happen, will it?" She laughed harshly and moved to attack.

"Actually, that's exactly what I think's gonna happen." I said, grinning wildly, caution for the moment forgotten. "Zyrgazelle, Pachazoa, IKU ZE!"


	19. Stardust

Chapter 19

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***Snicker* Poor Zyrgazelle. I used to see him as one of the most awesome Dark Spectrobes there is. I had one named Reaper, and he kicked ass. Now, after writing this chapter, in my mind he shall forever be connected with the 80's and David Bowie. Listen to the song 'Ziggy Stardust' if you don't get it. Hehehe...**

**Still Rallen's POV.**

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"Zyrgazelle, Pachazoa, IKU ZE!"

Black light shone around my Prizmod and gathered into two separate columns of smoke on either side of me. The smoke faded almost instantly, revealing my hard-trained Dark Spectrobes in all their glory. Zyrgazelle (Nicknamed Ziggy, as a joke.) swerved his head to look at me, wine-red stripes glowing dully on his muscular body, and metal feathers glinting like eyes in the dark. The catlike Spectrobe's eyes glinted maniacally and his blunt muzzle was carved into a menacing grin, white canines extended fully and mane bristling like wire.

Meeting his gaze steadily, I stared right back at him, figuring, that with my Spectrobes out, I could take my eyes off Maja for about a second. Ziggy, as Jeena was constantly reminding me, was a bit of a loose cannon, and I knew the look he was giving me a bit too well for my liking. That was bloodlust, pure and simple, and I really didn't need one of my Spectrobes going crazy right now.

Zyrgazelle slowly backed down, turning his head back to face Maja and giving off a low-grade growling. Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief.

_(Well, that's one thing going right.)_ I thought, focusing back on Maja, as Pachazoa (No nickname here. I'd considered Rain, but that was just a bit odd for a Aurora Spectrobe.) normally was pretty tame. To be honest actually, the giant, armored chameleon was better behaved than most of my regular Spectrobes, and the smartest with tactics of the entire lot. _(For that to work on Maja, though,)_ I thought slowly, _(I'll need a pretty good distraction. The shadows around here should help us work it though...)_

"How nice of you to take my suggestion! Although, I must admit, these two mongrels aren't quite as cute as your last batch." Maja smiled mirthlessly, half-knelt, and threw her arm dramatically up into the air, tattered cape flapping madly. "Maybe they'd enjoy having a couple of playmates. Pinska, Makanoto, if you please,"

Her Prizmod glimmered, momentarily visible through the shroud of black cloth, and with a crash like an earthquake, two meteors materialized and fell to the ground. When the smoke (And mud, don't forget this disgusting, Krawl-infested mud.) cleared, a pair of familiar faces leered down at me, back from the grave to haunt me again.

My eyes widened in shock and horror. I involuntarily took a step back, motioning for my Spectrobes to move with me and slowly backing into the bottom of the bowl. _(No way...) _I thought incredulously._ (I saw these two die... No... These must be some different Spectrobes... It's got to be. Nothing could've survived the blast from that satellite...)_

I raked my gaze over the two Dark Spectrobes, looking for something, anything that could prove me right. The Makanoto grinned, baring its inch-long fangs, and in that instant, I saw something that made my heart sink into the gutter. A scar, white and puckered had been ripped down the side of its muzzle, just barely missing its left eye but shredding that part of its nose to ribbons. I knew that scar. My own Spectrobe, Aoba, had made it, and for a hour afterward I could still hear the agonized scream it had wrenched from the pitiable creature.

I quickly turned to the Pinska standing opposite, and other little details fell into place. The shorter limbs and thicker chest, nicked horns that wrapped the skull like a ram's, and the dreadlocked mane that ran from forehead all the way to tail... _(These are the same Spectrobes...)_ I realized with a jolt. _(But how is that even possible?)_

"Surprised to see these two again?"

I looked up, and Maja smirked coldly at me, casually reaching over to run a hand down Pinska's back.

"Yeah." I said, for a moment unable to keep a note of trepidation out of my voice. "Yeah." I quickly recovered, determined not to let her have the satisfaction of knowing she'd scared me. "But I beat you guys once, and I can do it again!"

Maja snorted with derisive laughter. "Oh really?" She said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable. "I was unaware that Darkmos had any ancient, Spectrobe-powered satellite cannons orbiting it. If I was misinformed however, feel free to correct me."

I flushed angrily, and Zyrgazelle, sensing my emotion, dug his claws into the ground and prepared to spring, so that I had to grab him by the scruff of his neck to keep him steady. He hissed at me, baring his teeth, but still (Barely) stayed.

_(You'll get your chance in a moment boy, just wait another second for the signal.)_ I tried to think as loudly as I could, concentrating on the area directly behind Maja. In the shadows of the trees there, I saw something odd, a patch of darkness that was just a bit different from the rest, continually shifting and oddly shiny.

_(Good.)_ I thought, _(He certainly took his sweet time about it, though.)_

"What's the matter, Rallen? Cat got your tongue?"

I smirked confidently right back at Maja. That ought to put a dent in her ego. At least, I hoped it would. I'd spent far too much time practicing that look in the mirror (Not that I'd ever admit to it.) for it _not_ to.

"Nope. Although if I were you, I wouldn't be saying anything." I whistled once. Maja looked at me oddly, but more importantly, the shadow behind her became completely invisible. "At least, not until I took a look behind me."

Maja whirled around, quickly shifting into a defensive stance, but not quickly enough. A blast of sickly green energy hit her over the shoulder at close range, blowing her back several feet and forcing her to the ground. In an moment more, something had quite literally trampled over her, clumsily cutting the tentacle holding the unconscious Kate up in two with an audible snap and dropping her roughly to the floor.

That was the signal. For just a second, everything seemed to happen in slow motion, Pachazoa flickering into full vision as she galumphed back to my side, Ziggy stiffening for the first spring and Maja's Spectrobes quickly processing the rapid turn of events. For a single moment after that, everything was still. Then, all hell broke loose.

Makanoto and Zyrgazelle lunged at the same time, colliding mid-jump. The heavier, mastiff-like creature sank his jaws into my Spectrobe, and Ziggy yowled in anger and pain, the noise morphing into a chilling hiss as he spat venomously, slamming his ebony claws into the Makanoto's side with enough force to rip straight through an ordinary Krawl. The Dark Spectrobe's only reaction was to dig in deeper with his teeth, any noise that he'd made muffled by his hold on Ziggy.

Pachazoa, now visible and in the open, was busy fending off a series of blows from Pinska, jagged nails bouncing sparks off the thickest parts of her armor. She roughly butted her head forward, knocking her opponent off balance, and foiling a tail swing directed at her spindly legs. In less than a second, she disappeared into thin air, to strike again in a moment.

In that second, I'd moved too. Ducking between the two burgeoning fights, I ran straight for Maja, intending to finish this fight before it began. _(That was the mistake I made last time.)_ I thought, sword materializing around my fist. _(Well, I'm not making it again!)_

Maja had quickly recovered from the blast, already back on her feet with murder in her eyes. She lashed out with a tentacle, and I jerked to one side to avoid it. _(She's slower than last time.)_ I realized. _(Pachazoa's paralysis worked!)_ For a just a microsecond, I grinned. _(Now we're evenly matched.)_

With evident difficulty, Maja skipped backwards to avoid my slash. I had her on the defensive. She snarled something illegible at me under her breath, and a loosely collected ball of black, shadowy energy formed in her palms, before shooting toward me at a MUCH faster pace than I'd thought her capable of. It smashed me in the stomach, spinning, and crushed the wind out of me. Even with my armor, I felt sharp spikes of pain and deathly cold ripping through my body, even as the ball itself vanished into thin air.

I dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. "Wha..t... What was..s that?" I asked, staring up at her. This wasn't good. If just a single attack could take so much out of me...

Maja smirked patronizingly at me, and I felt my insides boil with fury. I swear, even Jado was getting to be less annoying than her! "Silly Rallen. That would spoil the surprise, if I told you now."

I gritted my teeth and forced myself up onto my feet, drawing my sword as I did so. "It doesn't matter." I said, with as much confidence as I could muster. I don't think she bought it. "I'll beat you anyways!" With that, I charged again, ignoring a spurt of pain around my midsection, and slashing quickly at Maja, who stepped away just a second too late. She screamed as my blade's electrified surface tore her arm open, the noise suddenly passing out of human hearing. Behind me, the various fighting Spectrobes paused and shirked away from the noise, a heavily bleeding Pinska even going so far as to try and cover his ears.

I'd just taken this particular bit of information in when Maja furiously counterstruck, her hair smashing violently into my stomach, knocking me back a pace. I heard a loud crack on impact, and felt something break, painfully.

I clutched my hand to my side, grimacing. _(Oww... That would be a rib. This is bad...)_

I braced myself for another attack, my breaths shallow and quick. At this point, the best I could hope for was that one of my Spectrobes would be able to save my skin, and that Maja's arm injury was enough to keep her from fighting efficiently. If not... I really didn't want to think about what would happen then.

Maja fixed me a look of pure malice, something that gave me a pretty clear idea of what she was going to do. Suddenly, a broken rib and internal bleeding didn't sound so painful. Not compared to what would happen if I didn't keep on my feet and fight.

"As much as I'd like to keep toying around with you, Rallen, I've got some bigger fish to fry, as the saying goes." She snarled this through gritted teeth, trying to keep any pain out of her voice. The area around us became a fraction lighter. "This should be better for you anyways, it'll be over quickly and with minimal pain." She spat, and the odd, silvery light that had been filling the arena became stronger, shining down on Maja herself.

"You don't deserve it, considering all you've done to my brethren, but we all must make sacrifices for the greater good." She finished, and the light glimmered blindingly, giving the entire area a curiously flat appearance. I moved slowly, into a defensive position, trying not to disturb my wound, but unsure of what was coming next. Weren't Krawl supposed to _hate_ light? Then, with a horrific jolt, I realized something. The slash that I'd inflicted down Maja's arm had stopped bleeding. Skin, or at least the Krawl equivalent, had just begun to seal the bottom of the burnt and severed flesh back onto the main arm, scratches and cracks in the bone healing, slowly.

I lurched forward, and pain fogged my vision white, but it didn't matter. I had to stop this, right now an-

"You are _NOT_ stealing Umbreon's move on my watch!"

A blurred figure, moving on all fours, slammed into the High Krawl, shoulder-first. The werelight vanished in an instant, dying away, and with a crack like thunder, Kate, who everyone had pretty much forgotten about, was sent flying across the ground, mud roiling up in sheaths in her wake. She coughed, and a dribble of blood came up with the odd, panting sound. We both looked at her.

Something was off here. Kate was breathing heavily, crouched over with one hand on the ground and the other clenched around Lyoko's Pokeball. She moved jerkily in her armor, like a badly handled puppet, and a snarl ran across her face, suddenly sharp canines bared slightly. In the comparative darkness, I could make out a tiny glow around the rings on her wrists, and the tension crackled around all three of us like a live wire.

Maja stared Kate down, trying to keep eyes on both of us at once. I warily held my position. If Maja could just deflect a flying tackle like that, there was no use in trying a strike while she was on aware. But everything still felt wrong to me. It was like something else entirely was going on between these two, something that changed the significance of this battle entirely, and I had no idea what it was. In the next second, though, I got a pretty good hint.

"How did you know what that technique was?" Maja's tone was guarded, and you could feel veiled danger pulsing just beneath the surface. I almost thought that I heard something else, something like a faint note of fear, but if it was there, it was well-hidden.

Kate's grin hiked up another notch, revealing more tooth in a feral expression. _(Was this what she was talking about in the meeting...?)_ I thought, the beginnings of suspicion starting through my mind.

"What kind of Trainer would I be if I didn't?" A hungry, bloodlusting expression appeared in her eyes, and her voice carried definite power. This was not the scared, footweary girl of a couple minutes ago, who flinched at every sudden movement, but something else entirely. "Moonlight's an uncommon move to use, but, then, Umbreon's an uncommon Pokemon." She snickered for second, and, curiosity and fear momentarily forgotten, my stomach twisted uncomfortably. _(Why do I always get stuck with the psychos?) _I thought, almost exasperatedly. _(That's just creepy, laughing like that.)_

Maja's expression was one of absolute shock, and her whole attention was focused on Kate, fear now blatantly showing. That snapped me out of my little daydream. Something was definitely going on here, and I needed to figure out what. Or at the very least, get some information on it and give that to Jeena to work with. It only took me a split second more to figure out what to do, but, as it turned out, a split second was just a tiny bit too long.

As quickly as it came, Maja masked her shock, hiding it behind a facade of confidence. Looking to the both of us, and gently cradling her still-bleeding arm, she smirked for a final time, scorn coloring her face.

"It seems that the tides for this fight have swung in your favor, Rallen." Her gaze shot past me, and I saw that through all the time, she kept her eyes fixed on Kate, who still looked like she could go feral at any second, almost foaming at the mouth. _(Why?)_ I thought to myself, furiously scouring my mind for any hints as to why this was happening. _(She's just a stray kid, and she can't even use Spectrobes! What's so important about her?) _I ground my teeth slightly, waiting for just another moment before I attacked, trying to get any information I could out of her.

Maja did another one of those innocent shrug things, although this one was significantly hindered by the fact that she had to keep one arm supported. That, was at least one thing this mission had accomplished. "After all, it's hardly fair for me to fight both of you at once." Behind that mask of confidence, I saw a sudden crack, as Maja seemed to take a deep breath, or at least the Krawl equivalent, like she was steeling herself up for something. My gut sense screamed at me that this was no good, and that sinking suspicion was confirmed with her next words.

"Before this ends though, I've prepared a little gift for you both, so even if, against all odds, my Krawl troops don't finish you off, it will." Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to move, but I could only stand rooted in horror as Maja raised her uninjured arm, hawklike talons curving out of her fingers, and ripped a second slash down her arm, thick, tarry blood streaming out and pooling onto the floor, joining the mud underfoot. She winced painfully, but otherwise didn't react. "Goodbye, Rallen. I'll look forward to seeing you in the next life."

Enough was enough. I moved in a blur, broken rib grating painfully, sword raised, too late. The world seemed to suddenly lurch dangerously around me, and, midstep, I lost balance and plummeted to the ground. A wave of fiery pain coursed through my body, like a stake driven into my chest, and I thrashed wildly about, trying to get back to my feet. It slacked off for a moment, leaving my breath in ragged gasps, then returned with greater power, killing any attempt that I'd made to get up. A scream from beside me signified that Kate had been likewise afflicted, and looking over, I saw her, twitching and jerking oddly, teeth still bared, scrabbling at the floor for imagined enemies in some kind of fit.

The next wave hit, and my vision flickered dangerously in a pain-filled haze. Even through that, though, I could see that both Maja and her Spectrobes were gone. Ziggy and Pachazoa were both bleeding profusely, and even as I looked on, they dissolved weakly into smoke and re-entered my Prizmod, which opened to reveal...?

_(The Distress signal...?)_ Jeena had told me that she wouldn't be able to help me if I was on the the night side of the planet, so it'd be useless to press the big red button. _(This is life-or-death, though. This entire planet is a Krawl soup, and I can't fight off jack right now.)_ Another wave ripped through, but I almost didn't feel it, like it was happening to someone else. _(I've got to.)_

Knowing I had only moments before I blacked out for real, I painstakingly reached out and hit the button. _(C'mon Jeena... Just hear me...)_ The soft waves of blackness finally pulled me under.

* * *

Jeena expertly wheeled the ship over Rallen's coordinates, circling slowly at a height of approx. two miles, as per regulation. The floodlights were on full power, but even so, Krawl vortexes would occasionally come a little too close for comfort, necessitating her warning shots into deep space. She did that mechanically though, out of habit, which left her free to ponder the rest of what was on her mind.

She was worried about Rallen, for one. The last time he'd faced Maja, he almost had gotten himself killed, and it was only her timely intervention which had saved him. Now he was facing the same quandary with a pair of potentially unstable Dark Spectrobes, an idiot Leopuba, and a kid tagging along for the ride.

There was some good news, though, too. If Rallen _had_ found Alodus' Prizmod, it meant they might be that much closer to finding Alodus himself. And even if she didn't show it as much as her partner, Jeena missed him as well. It would be good to have another voice of reason back on the ship. It got lonely with just one other person for company, even if you counted Kate, who had spent a lot of the time on the ride over just looking out a window.

A blip on the Patrol Cruiser's main monitor pulled Jeena out of her musings. It was split between a pair of bios showing Kate and Rallen's vital signs, the latter which was almost flatlining, and a radar showing Krawl activity on the ground below. Jeena's blue eyes widened, and she pushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes to check if she was seeing right. She was.

A distress call suddenly rang throughout the cabin, all flashing lights and ringing bells. Jeena took one last look at the monitor, hesitated for a second, and saved a record of everything it had picked up in the last hour, before rapidly turning the ship and prepping for a dive. True, they were both on the night side, but if what the monitor had picked up was correct...

_(I'm coming Rallen... Now let's see what this baby can really do!)_ For just a moment, the Patrol Cruiser hung in space, in perfect stillness. Then, the engines pulsed, and in a blaze of light, the ship tore into the planet's atmosphere, streaking like a silvery comet.

* * *

**Merry Christmas everyone! **

**I'm sorry this took so long to finish, but I was really having a hard time with it because I'm still missing some info on Beyond the Portals, and Bulbapedia wasn't cooperating with me. Still, I think it turned out okay, apart from the ending bit with Rallen, which really sucks. Anyways, I've got a challenge for everyone! **

**There are three Pokemon moves that are used in this chapter, and if you can correctly tell me all three of them in a review, then you get a gingerbread Komainu, with icing and sprinkles and everything! One already has the name given, and the other two are Ghost type. So review! PLEASE! It's the season of giving!**


	20. Author's Note: Please Read

Author's Note: On Hiatus

* * *

**ARGH! Sorry, note revised. For anyone who didn't get the message, I was going to discontinue this fanfic, but err... your reactions made me change my mind. As of now, 17/7 is on hiatus until I have more time... So you can expect an update sometime early this summer... **

**Yeah... sorry about that... So... message me if you have any other questions, I guess.. **


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